I love internet discussion sites because we can all be monday morning quarterbacks! :lol:
Not the water sac, the calf sac, again, bad choice of words on my part but when a cow has passed the sac first a dead calf usually follows, the fact that this heifer didn't make any effort to assist (period!) meant that we did get the calf alive, just! The fact that we assisted at all gets her a one way ticket out of here.
As policy we don't assist cows to do those things we believe are basic and fundamental to profitability and also we believe that our role as a seedstock producer is to prevent as many problems as possible being manifested in our valuable commercial customers herds. Job 1 of any cow is to get bred, have a live calf on her own, own it, raise it, get bred back and do it all again next year. She should do this in decent flesh with zero purchased feed and with a good attitude. No excuses, no exceptions.
This individual heifer failed on this, we intervened, it is irrelevent the size of the calf, most years now we barely see a cow calve, let alone assist. As I said, you can make exceptions or excuses for any animal, it's a free country, and perhaps our philosophy seems harsh but it has evolved as a result of experience, usually bad experiences with cattle that we made an exception for.
Anyone want a 2yo heifer that can't do the basics with a small steer calf at side and the start of a uterine infection (treated this am, more expense!)
No offers considered, we don't sell on problems we eat them.
