Dead newborn-predation? Birth defects?

[dottieruthlove]

Hey everybody--longtime lurker here. DFW area.

Yesterday I found a dead newborn Mini Zebu. It had been predated upon, but not in a usual way, also been moved around also over several hours (worker in the pasture saw it in different locations over the day). A neighbor Great Pyrenees has been implicated in the past. I wonder if this is a new predator or what?

Never had a face chewed off like that. Tail is gone, hardly any anal damage, never had a leg removed so cleanly. The spine is super weird. The back leg is weird, I dunno why. I don't see any other chew marks. When I found it in the afternoon, it was not in rigor mortis. It's in a trash bag in the toolshed right now, I'm gonna examine it again and take pictures. Gonna place it in our cow graveyard protected enclosure to study its skeleton. Thanks for any advice and opinions!

 

[Nkline]

Looks like curly calf syndrome, it was probably weak or born dead. I doubt a predator killed it.

 

[Caustic Burno]

Thought that was an Angus problem.

 

[bird dog]

No rigor mortis usually means it never breathed.

 

[Ky hills]

My guess would be that it was still born due to some kind of deformity.

 

[Nkline]

Thought that was an Angus problem.

Some genes are prone to mutations, loss of function in a gene can cause the same mutation symptoms while there may be separate origination events.

The Angus association had the money to chase more mutations than other breeds, plus the epd system was leading to population bottlenecking causeing more double recessive mutations to be expressed.

 

[Dave]

Thought that was an Angus problem.

Curly calf can be caused by the cow eating lupine.

 

[Buck Randall]

It can be a random occurrence. I just saw one out of a Jersey.

 

[Silver]

Arthrogryposis. My best guess.

 

[J Hoy]

Hey everybody--longtime lurker here. DFW area.

Yesterday I found a dead newborn Mini Zebu. It had been predated upon, but not in a usual way, also been moved around also over several hours (worker in the pasture saw it in different locations over the day). A neighbor Great Pyrenees has been implicated in the past. I wonder if this is a new predator or what?

Never had a face chewed off like that. Tail is gone, hardly any anal damage, never had a leg removed so cleanly. The spine is super weird. The back leg is weird, I dunno why. I don't see any other chew marks. When I found it in the afternoon, it was not in rigor mortis. It's in a trash bag in the toolshed right now, I'm gonna examine it again and take pictures. Gonna place it in our cow graveyard protected enclosure to study its skeleton. Thanks for any advice and opinions!

While often blamed on bad genes, these types of birth defects can be caused by mineral deficiencies during fetal development. It is too bad the dog chewed the front of the face off, which is fairly common with canines that find dead newborn grazing animals. It would have been interesting to see if the calf had underdeveloped facial bones in addition to the skeletal and limb malformations. It likely also had an enlarged right ventricle of the heart and underdeveloped thymus. The calf was either born dead or died soon after it was born. Newborn mammals with such extensive birth defects do not live long after they are born, if they are born alive. I have necropsied deer, calves and domestic goats with similar leg malformations, but only one deer fawn had similar spinal malformations in addition to the crooked legs. All had underdeveloped upper facial bones and an underbite. I never considered such malformations to be caused by the genes of the parents, since it happened in multiple species.

 

[dottieruthlove]

Looks like curly calf syndrome, it was probably weak or born dead. I doubt a predator killed it.

It looks just like curly calf from web pix. No Angus influence ever. But i will still have dam and sire tested.

 

[dottieruthlove]

While often blamed on bad genes, these types of birth defects can be caused by mineral deficiencies during fetal development. It is too bad the dog chewed the front of the face off, which is fairly common with canines that find dead newborn grazing animals. It would have been interesting to see if the calf had underdeveloped facial bones in addition to the skeletal and limb malformations. It likely also had an enlarged right ventricle of the heart and underdeveloped thymus. The calf was either born dead or died soon after it was born. Newborn mammals with such extensive birth defects do not live long after they are born, if they are born alive. I have necropsied deer, calves and domestic goats with similar leg malformations, but only one deer fawn had similar spinal malformations in addition to the crooked legs. All had underdeveloped upper facial bones and an underbite. I never considered such malformations to be caused by the genes of the parents, since it happened in multiple species.

I so wish I'd necropsied it as soon as I found it! I had total tunnel vision about the chewed-up nose and leg. It was only after I scrutinized the pic that i saw all the deformities.

 

[dottieruthlove]

No rigor mortis usually means it never breathed.

I didn't know that!

 

[dottieruthlove]

Curly calf can be caused by the cow eating lupine.

Web says lupine ingestion is days 40-70, and our bluebonnets don't sprout till around March.

 

[Lucky_P]

Cut off and freeze an ear, in the event that you experience more like that. It could come in handy. While deformed calves may result from a number of causes or 'accidents' during fetal development, occasionally, there is a heritable genetic defect which may be the cause.

I got my very own Angus genetic defect... Sodium Channel Neuropathy... a registered bull that we purchased as a yearling was evidently the 'founder' - the gene mutation causing SCN appears to have originated in him; no ancestors with genetic info on file carry the SCN defective gene.
Used him over the entire (commercial) herd for 2 years (fall and spring-calving herds), then used him as 'cleanup bull' behind AI for 5 years(he was very docile, and his daughters were really nice), and used a halfblood SimAngus son on a group of heifers for one season... so, there were occasional sire/daughter, sire/granddaughter matings that resulted in defective calves - born alive at term, but were unable to stand and had to be euthanized... and the SimAngus son also was a carrier and sired some defective calves out of granddaughters and great-granddaughters of his sire. IIRC correctly, we had 14 defective calves born over a 5-year period.
I had saved frozen ears from almost all affected calves, blood samples from almost all cows that delivered defective calves and had extensive records of cow families, which were all helpful in helping Dr. Jon Beever (then at UofIL) identify the abnormal gene. We ended up pulling blood samples from every female in the herd to identify which ones were carriers, which were defect-free. Bulls had been sold to slaughter before we got to the point of pulling blood samples.

Dispersed the herd in 2019, so my SCN carrier cows/heifers are who-knows-where now, but all were just commercial crossbreds (Angus/Simmental/Shorthorn/Braunvieh of varying percentages in the mix), so the likelihood that anyone will ever see SCN again is virtually nil.