Inducing Heat Wave Calves

          Today a friend told me that he has heard that lots of people induce their cows bred to heatwave if they go over their due date.  I know you would only do this if you were 100% that the cow was bred to him and if you had a vet come and check to make sure it is in the righ position.  But after all this would you still induce or not.  This is the first year that I will be having heatwave calves.  My first one is due march 31st and I am a little nervous to say the least (lol)

We have induced alot of cows that were clubby bred. The cows sometimes don't clean rite away, but it beats the alternative.

I do this as well as long as you know the cow is due then. I will even induce a few days early if weather is ok and it is big birth weight genetics. We did this alot last year and cows still bred back just fine.

if confirmed to heatwave pop those out about a week early and get the cows to clean. If they dont clean drop some tetracycl bolouses in there and you may want to infuse later and kickem with a shot of lut.  just a thought..... we dont have any trouble breeding them back

a shot of oxytocin has always worked for us to clean up the few we induce.  We also do it on some heifers to promote milk production

how much oxytocin do you give to those heifers to help there milk production ?

WhoaFlicka said:

how much oxytocin do you give to those heifers to help there milk production ?

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oxytocin helps milk let down, not production.... not trying to be an ass. just fyi

1-2cc for letdown.  As stated above, won't help with volume/production.

oxy also helps them clean out, my abs man first told me this and 3 vets later we tried it out and give it occasionally and helps with milk and shedding placental remnants (forgive me for forgetting the proper term for it at the moment)

and sorry, I meant letdown but typed production

If you IV Oxytocin you can use .2 cc to make them have a letdown.  I milked way too many cows in my life and .2 cc with a 28ga needle in the milk vein and the stubborn old girls would pour milk.  I think it can help in production if the cow is holding up the milk and drying herself off.  But in the short term no it doesn't help production.  It will also help with cleaning after they calve.  Same reason that a cow that looses a calf and never gets sucked out often has cleaning problems as they never get the natural oxytocin.  Just my observations over time.  LF

what are you giving them to induce the labor

Our vet recommends 10 cc dexamethosome and 5 cc Lutalyse. We use Oxy in the 1st 24 hours for milk and retained placenta.

We used Heat Wave and kept track of the cow all along. It was her 4th calf and we induced on her due date. She had a 100# calf we had to jack out. This year same cow used Heat wave son and she calfed week early on her own. We knew for sure of AI date and due date on this cow. The last thing you want to due is induce and the cow is too early.