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I would have kept this one going if she'd fed for herself. Bottling her twice a day and then having to cut her food would have been far too much to go on with. We don't know what caused it other than chance since we've excluded BVD, Lepto, any of the other diseases mentioned. Possibly the...

I had a "hare lip" calf this season. Born live, missing half her hard palate, her nasal passage was open in her mouth, bottom jaw had grown into the gap. She couldn't suckle properly, obviously had numerous other developmental issues and I put her down a couple of weeks ago. She was never...

Fantastic. Things like that can really take off as sales platforms. Here we had a local start-up that always rivalled ebay, simply because it was local and "ours" not US-based. Naturally it was eventually bought by someone off-shore but it was good for a decade or more.

Most of my "assists" get checked early if I'm suspicious (because I've learnt the "too late" lesson) and if the calf is presenting properly, or even if I've had to bring it up/round/into the right position, if there's no reason to pull it (like a backwards one), I let her out into a small yard...

I called the vet out to help me with the last one I didn't pull myself. As the guy drove in and got out of his truck, there was a wet slop noise and we shone the light over in the pen and the calf was on the ground. It's the only one I've ever seen and I too remembered seeing somewhere that...

Looks like a nice little heifer to me. :)

I was reminded last night that a three-day following bull means the cow is actually coming on heat. She doesn't smell interesting for that long when it's a pregnant three-week date. Ah well, another nice calf from my yearling bull instead of the Aussie sire I gave her first.

I often see a three-week cycle "interest" in the just-pregnant cows. My bull has been following one of the cows around for the last three days but there doesn't seem to be anything happening apart from his interest. He seemed similarly taken with another yesterday, on her three-week date...

271 days from mating/insem is my signal! Udders vary too much to be a good indicator. Pelvic ligament softening is often a really good one to watch but even that varies widely. But there's usually a bit of soft dipping in front of the pin bones in the few hours before calving that wasn't...

When you write that it didn't break, do you mean it came out entirely within an unbroken sac or just that it was still over the front of the calf? If the latter, many of mine do that. Some have a tear further back and so when they move or if the cow delivers from standing, the membranes are...

Why do you call her Fat Girl? Had a few already, by the look of her.

Some cattle don't milk! What was her mother like and her sire's mother? If they weren't good milkers, or even if they were and she's genetically unlucky, it might just be the way she is. Got pictures? Let us know how she is when she calves.

Mine begin showing changes at about five months gestation. I had one family who were more advanced than the others, wondered if something had gone amiss with my plans. They just had more milk.

Sometimes they miss out on the milk genes and will never do the job. Sometimes it's just a heifer thing but when they really can't feed their first calf, their next isn't likely to get much either.

I'd be concerned about having got everything out. Here I'd call a vet when things got that nasty, since I'd fear uterine infection. I've never had to deal with a calf dead long enough to start falling apart. My worst ones have only had a slight whiff to them. How much do you like her?

Was it deformed or just disintegrating?

Thanks for that one Lucky_P. I think I've done a bit of that by accident, when spending ages figuring out the chains, eventually working two arms in like I watched the vet do. Most of the dilation is as a result of the hormonal changes, presumably? The video that came up next for me was a guy...

It's the 'pooper' heifers that keep me out at night when they're expected. I've seen that too many times and it's such a waste of a year's work to miss that minute during which you could rescue the calf! The ones I see aren't tiny though, they're the ones their mothers are just glad are...

I chose chains for the ease of cleaning them. I'm so slack at tidying up after something goes wrong, that being able to just soak the gunk off ss chains is exactly what I need.

My vets have always used one loop above the fetlock joint, with the chain feeding through the loop on top of the joint, so that's the way I've done it too. I have enough trouble getting one loop around, without trying to work out the complications of two! We've either been lucky or careful...