Darned malpresentation...

[DavisBeefmasters]

...nothing as of last nights calf check at 10 p.m. (which obviously I didn't check close enough)

...this morning at 5 a.m. cow with 1 front leg stuck out -- 1 and only 1 VERY COLD STIFF front leg stuck out - RATS!

...calf was already dead, the other front leg was so far back that nobody had a long enough reach to pull it forward. The vet OK'd pulling it in that position, and advised that we would hear a pop when we broke the shoulders apart from one another across the cows hips -- after the pop it was an easy pull

beautiful 70 to 75# dead heifer

That's the first pull of the year with only 6 calves left to go... here's to a more successful finish!

Anyone ever have a leg that far back? When we pulled her out it was straight down along the belly in between the back legs.

 

[randiliana]

That's too bad. But stuff happens. We've missed things too, only to end up with a dead calf because of it. Who knows, she may not have started until AFTER your 10 pm check.

I can say though, that we have never had a front leg back like that. Upside down, backwards, breech, head back and the odd one with a front leg malpresentation, but nothing as major as yours was.

 

[dun]

Had one like that year before last. I dithered with it for an hour and couldn;t even find the leg. The neighbor from the dairy came over and dithered around for another hour, he couldn;t find the leg either. Vet got back in town and came over. Took him half an hour to find the leg and another half hour to get it out. Pulled a dandy live bull calf, he was a bit slow to get motoering around very well but within a week you couldn;t pick him out of all the other calves.

 

[DavisBeefmasters]

I tried for about an hour -- could touch the shoulder but couldn't get behind the leg to grab hold

Neighbor tried for about an hour and couldn't get behind the leg either

We pushed the entire calf back after attaching the pullers to the one leg and snare to the head, but that darned second leg was not something we could get a hold of...

Vet was stuck on an "emergency" call -- tending a high dollar horse somewhere about 2 hours from us... thus we gave the epidural of lidocaine, waited 5-10 minutes for the meds to kick in, gave it a last ditch effort to get that leg, and then pulled.

Bummer of a way to start the day - but at least we saved the cow.

 

[farmwriter]

Sorry for your troubles. Maybe you got your lumps over for the season and the rest will go smoothly.

 

[dun]

The strangest malpresentation we've had was a calf with one foot over the top of it's head so that the hoof was just behind the top of the head. Cow had the calf but it was dead and the hoof tore the vaginal wall and the rectal wall of the cow.

 

[dun]

Never even had so much as a mal presentation. Knock on wood.

UNless it stops the delivery or you actually see it you might be surprised at how many claves are born succesfully even with a malpresentation. We had cow last year that sort of disappeared for half a day. When I found her she had a tried calves tail hanging out. I reached inside while out in the pasture and felt the butt, no feet or legs. Came up to the hosue to get some equipment and when I got back to her (maybe 10 minutes) she had passed the calf as a full breech. It was dead but she ws able to have it by herself, just had a hard time doing it.

 

[jcarkie]

i had one leg back like that, it was dead when the vet went to stretch out the head it slid right out.
like dun said if have ever found a cow with a calf dead for no reason she may have had a malpresentation and finally had it on her own. we had one that's head was alittle swelled but we never knew why it was dead.