A bad night

[wrc]

Last night started out pretty good with a bad ending this morning.  Around 4 yesterday my neighbor, who is a small animal vet, called and had an extra ticket for the Ok State game.  Well we are right in the middle of calving and I had my reservations about leaving but we don't live far from the stadium and my wife would be here to check cattle.  At halftime my wife sent me a text that one of our Ohlde cows was in labor.  She's a heck of a cow and raises a good calf and I had a Meyer 734 x Angus embryo in her so we headed home.  She was not getting it done so we brought her in and started pulling the calf with my neighbor vet friend helping.  When I went in to get the legs everything felt right other than the feet were higher in the birth canal than normal.  It was a fairly hard pull but not too bad, the calf seemed ok so we turn the cow out and thats when she started bleeding.  Long story short the calfs feet had torn the upper part of the vaginal wall so bad that it couldn't be repaired and she died early this morning.  Now the kids have a Meyer 734 bottle calf and I lost on of my best cows.  Sometimes there is just nothing that you can do I guess.  One bright spot is that one of the first calf heifers that I had been worried about calved on her own this morning and her and calf are doing good.  The Meyer calf took a full bottle of colostrum last night and a bottle this morning, but has not stood yet.  We are hopeful that we can save him,  he is a big stout calf.  Sure wanted a heifer, but thats a whole nother story.

 

[ploughshare]

Sorry for your troubles. Luck never seems to be on the side of the good ones.  Any chance you can graft the calf onto another cow?  IMO the down side of the oldhe cattle is their low CEM.

 

[Freddy]

Very sorry to hear of your bad luck   ,an when your young ,energetic, trying to get more good ones to work with it is especially hard er to cope with some of these misfortunes,.. Been in that same sittuation an back then things like losing animals was especially hard because of your expectations, young family trying to make things work..   WEll my kids are on there own an when you get older you seem to get calased or been there done that an doesn't bother you as much , but you know that things will workout ...

 

[Bulldaddy]

Sorry for your loss.  It is tough to lose a good one like that.  I like the breeding on the calf and wish you could find a Jersey cow or something else to graft him onto.  Those bottle calves have a tough time keeping up with the others.  Good luck!

 

[wrc]

UPDATE.  The calf has stood up and taken a few steps,but he is pretty weak and not able to stand for long.  We are trying to get the heifer that calved this morning to take the calf.  I hate to put another calf on a first calf heifer but she is the only cow I have that might take this calf.  The heifer seems a little bit interested in the calf and she has plenty of milk right now for 2 calves.  Maybe we will get lucky.  I've got to get the calf strong enough to help himself a little and then it might work. 

 

[wrc]

Another update.  The calf is up and getting around good now.  The heifer that we are trying to put him on will stand and let him nurse as long as I have feed in front of her.  I think she is starting to accept him.  My kids aren't real happy about it because they wanted a botle calf, but I'm feeling a lot better about it.  Heres a pic of him when the kids had him in the yard.

 

[LostFarmer]

If you are going to bottle feed one I would feed the heifers calf and graft this one onto the heifer.  I have 3 holstein angus cross cows that I calve about 3 weeks before the main herd.  It works well in that I can milk the cows for the table and also feed a calf or 3 as the need arises.  It also gives me a calf to graft on to a cow that loses one.  One year we had a run of twins and one old nurse cow raised 3 and did it well.  She needed fed like a milk cow to do it though.  LF

 

[forbes family farms]

I am really sorry for your bad luck, it seems like it always happens to the best ones!

 

[wrc]

I broke down and bought a nurse cow today.  The heifer would let the calf nurse as long as I was right there and with me and my wife both having full time jobs it just wasn't going to work out.  The calf hit it right off with the cow and I think we did the right thing and she has enough milk for another calf if we need her too.

 

[OKshorthorn]

Sorry to hear about your bad luck...We had a similar situation happen on Friday and lost the cow. If you don't mind me asking, how much and where did you get your nurse cow? We are in Kingfisher.

PS...I was also in Stillwater on Saturday, how bout them Cowboys?

 

[wrc]

Sent you a pm OKshorthorn.  Go Cowboys, and bring on the rain.