cow born without tail and anus need help

[Alan]

he was a normal calf but the tail and anus.

hated too, but shot him several hours ago.

My hats off to you, it is not a fun thing to do , but you did the right thing and I know it was not easy. Better roads ahead.

:tiphat:

Alan

 

[LazyARanch]

Dang shame... truly! He was a lovely calf and his affliction just a fluke of nature.

Neighbor had a calf like that too a year or so ago. Had to shoot it. He'd never seen anything like it and he's raised thousands of calves.

Sorry for the loss.

 

[scf84]

this was my first

 

[Kscattle]

I know you hated to but it was the humane thing to do, better than selling on Craig's list! I'm just curious if it was testicles on the belly or possibly the anus, penis, intestines. Just out of curiosity, did you see it pee? I've never seen anything like it

 

[gizmom]

Really sorry you had to put the calf down. But you did the right thing, we are responsible for these little fellers and in this case the responsible thing to do was to end his suffering.

Gizmom

 

[regolith]

Are the eyes normal? The pic looks like the eye is hollow, like it is missing. What are you going to do?
Lucky, why can't a vet make an anus, if everything else is working normally. Salvage value for butcher beef? Just trying to think of other options...

So, it is a bull calf with no scrotum?

I've heard of vets operating on calves like these to create a passage. Not something I'd do for salvage, not sure it's a good idea even for a potential top cow, given what I've been reading recently about congenital defects. Some anomalies are fairly common but can be linked with internal defects also... I don't know how you'd know whether the calf was okay inside or not, or whether it's just a developmental thing or it's something that's incorporated in the calf's genes.
I've seen at least two, maybe three over the years that appeared normal but suckled once, got big round bellies and would never drink again and were never seen to pass anything. Thankfully they've been the sort of calves that it was an easy decision to put them down and bury them.

 

[Chris H]

Are the eyes normal? The pic looks like the eye is hollow, like it is missing. What are you going to do?
Lucky, why can't a vet make an anus, if everything else is working normally. Salvage value for butcher beef? Just trying to think of other options...

So, it is a bull calf with no scrotum?

I've heard of vets operating on calves like these to create a passage. Not something I'd do for salvage, not sure it's a good idea even for a potential top cow, given what I've been reading recently about congenital defects. Some anomalies are fairly common but can be linked with internal defects also... I don't know how you'd know whether the calf was okay inside or not, or whether it's just a developmental thing or it's something that's incorporated in the calf's genes.
I've seen at least two, maybe three over the years that appeared normal but suckled once, got big round bellies and would never drink again and were never seen to pass anything. Thankfully they've been the sort of calves that it was an easy decision to put them down and bury them.

Years ago, my dad got a boar that threw pigs with an incomplete rectum. That was a genetic issue with the boar, discovered a bit late. I remember mom and dad checking on the piglets a day or so after birth. If they were blown up they would use a tool to cut a hole over where the anus should be. Sometimes it was just a skin covering the anus and once opened, it allowed the feces to pass & the opening would heal on its own. Sometimes the rectum wouldn't end close enough to the skin, and there wasn't anything they could do, and not worth a vet call to salvage them. Kind of interesting to read about, heart-breaking when it's your own stock.

Hope this was just a fluke for scf84.

 

[Beef Man]

In every so many birrths there are some freak'y thinghs happen ,who knows why? Have saw a calf with a similar problem and quickly put it down, another odd thing of nature. Usually when there is one problem there can be something else show up.Good chance that the cow will never have any more problems but if you do run her dry,why keep her? A good smooth dry cow is pretty valuable on the beef market today.I do realize that I tend to ramble but have a interesting story about a freak and my expierence. As a quite young cowhand I was helping Dad calf some cows and when I went out early one morning found a fair sized old cow down with calfs back feet showing and as we mostly did our own vet work[still do] I got the old Dr Franklin and proceeded to pull man o man was it a tough pull. After a good deal of time I began to realize that maybe I wasn't maybe as knowledgeable as I thought but had started so could'nt just quit. Anyway after along time the calf did finally come and it had 2 complete heads and it was amazeing that it had come at all.One person with any ability at all would have did a little examination and took the calf out in pieces and everything wouldhave been so much better. Did finally get the cow up and she did raise a graft but that in itself was just dumb luck.

 

[Workinonit Farm]

You did the right thing. Its a shame when that happens, but now and then Mother Nature has her own ideas. A number of years ago. where I used to work, there were 3 born without an anus over the course of 2 years. They had tails, just no anus. Different cows to different bulls. Black Angus.

Katherine

 

[greybeard]

Searching the old CT threads, it seems this defect isn't all that uncommon.

 

[branguscowgirl]

Thank you for the pictures, very educational for those of us that have not seen this before.
I am sorry for your loss. As others have said, this poor calf probably also had other problems that are not visible.
I personally would not get rid of the cow......but I run a very small herd, and they are all my pets. Raising cattle is not a business for me.

 

[chippie]

Over the years (45) I've had two animals born with birth defects. One was a goat born without back legs from the hocks down and a jenny born without an anus
She has a rectal / vaginal fissue and defecates out of her vulva. She is about 10 years old now. The jennet (mother) was given to me bred and I don't know how she had been kept except that she was skinny for a donkey when I got her. We don't know what caused the goat problem.

I'm sorry about the calf. Somethings happen that we have no control over.

 

[Lucky_P]

Again, some of these defects are just 'accidents', but sometimes they are a heritable defect.
Have seen a number of atresia coli cases in Holsteins, and it's a known heritable defect in some lines of those cattle; in those animals, they do have an anus and rectum , but during fetal development, the anterior portion of the intestinal tract doesn't 'hook up with' the posterior segment, so feces can't get out.

Yes, a veterinarian could have done surgery and essentially performed a colostomy - provided they could find the 'blind' end of the intestinal tract - but for a crossbred commercial calf, it would likely have been more costly than the calf's economic worth.