Congenital chondrodystrophy

[lithuanian farmer]

Anyone had experience with it, possible causes and possible solutions.
A friend of ours is dealing with what it looks like it this year. Probably the 7th calf from around 20 calves. Had a couple before as well, but it is too common this year.
I have my own guess, but would like to hear other people thoughts and experiences as we personally never had such issue in 20 years of farming.
From what I have read it might be manganese deficiency or antigonism, as there are some issues with cows fertility as well. They will take some blood samples from cows, but I also suggested to take some samples of their feed and soil.

 

[Hpacres440p]

I love learning about new potential issues. Looked up an article from here in the US and it appears to be linked to mineral deficiencies and drought affected feeds or high silage diets. Any pictures of the affected calves?

 

[lithuanian farmer]

I love learning about new potential issues. Looked up an article from here in the US and it appears to be linked to mineral deficiencies and drought affected feeds or high silage diets. Any pictures of the affected calves?

Unfortunatelly didn't took any, but the last calf looks like this one:

Some had slight deformities in their front legs. Small calves, some pure angus some limx angus.

 

[Travlr]

Anyone had experience with it, possible causes and possible solutions.
A friend of ours is dealing with what it looks like it this year. Probably the 7th calf from around 20 calves. Had a couple before as well, but it is too common this year.
I have my own guess, but would like to hear other people thoughts and experiences as we personally never had such issue in 20 years of farming.
From what I have read it might be manganese deficiency or antigonism, as there are some issues with cows fertility as well. They will take some blood samples from cows, but I also suggested to take some samples of their feed and soil.

When you look up human related congenital chondrystophy you get this: Chondrodystophies happen because of a mutation in a gene that develops and maintains bone and brain tissue. These mutation occurs before a baby is born. One type of chondrodystrophy, achondroplasia, is the most common cause of dwarfism.

And yet when you look up the same issue in cattle it is most often blamed on poor feed quality. So something to be cured rather than something to be avoided by better management practices.

Congenital chondrodystrophy of unknown origin in beef herds - PubMed

Congenital chondrodystrophy of unknown origin (CCUO), often referred to as 'acorn calf disease' or congenital joint laxity and dwarfism (CJLD), has been reported in beef cattle in Canada, the United States, Europe, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. An association of CCUO with grazing...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

A lot of these congenital diseases weren't prevalent fifty years ago. So I'm going to suggest that something has changed. Is it grass? Is it the fertility of our soil? Yes, we could make that argument. Certainly there are changes based on how we manage our forages. But some of these anomalies are occurring in pastures that haven't been managed extensively and they suddenly show up. That leads to another thought. What about a genetic source? Perhaps a gene that limits an animal's ability to use manganese (or whatever), as well as an animal without that gene?

Currently the cattle population is ,and has been, using bulls generated by artificial insemination to improve their herds. Bulls produced from a limited gene pool leading to only a few top bulls. We are now flushing cows so that a single animal can produce many more related animals than they once did. This all means that a large percentage of animals, particularly within specific breeds, are closely related. Genetic diversity has crashed.

But... maybe we can fix the problem with extra special mineral mixes that only cost a few dollars more than the last expensive mineral mix we've been sold.

Snake oil required because we aren't paying attention to how our breeding practices are influencing the industry as a whole.

Just my two cents...