freak calf (sorta graphic PIC)

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this is pretty much how if found the calf in the sac. mind you had to really poke hard to tear the sac open and then i literally had to rip it hard to get it off. it was weird...

Picture_500.jpg
 
Beefy this has been a very intersting topic in spite of the sickly pictures. I've never tried inbreeding but have been reading up on it lately.
 
Beefy.......what kind of bull was the calf out of? To be TH I believe it would have to be TH positive in both the cow and the Bull. If your Bull was a cross bred and the Cow was a cross it could be possible. Now days anything that is not Full blood could have TH in it, so many Maine's and Simmentals have been crossbred with Shorthorns that are TH.
 
ive pretty much ruled out TH from the pics Certs posted and from reading up on it. the cow would only have 1/16 shorthorn in her, if that. the bull, being a beefmaster, would have 1/4 shorthorn so the calf should have no more than 5/32 shorthorn if i figured right.
 
buckaroo_bif":25rs5sm4 said:
Beefy this has been a very intersting topic in spite of the sickly pictures. I've never tried inbreeding but have been reading up on it lately.

i would never recommend it unless you are looking to see if you have a problem. i know a lot of farmers who will breed 2 or so heifers back to their father just to make sure their heifers arent carrying anything nasty that will show up later.
 
Well actually I would want to do more of a linebreeding , not inbreeding. If you breed a cow to her sire you have a coefficent of 25%. Interbreeding. Go one more step down the line and you have 12.5% coefficent. Linebreeding.
Jim Lents says coefficents are nothing to worry about.
 
Had a bulldog calf here about 4 years ago...was an unpleasant shock, to say the least. Testing is now available to determine if an animal is a carrier...breeding two carriers has a 25% chance of a bulldog calf (aborted at approx. 6 mo. gestation, dead of course).
 
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Beefy,

This is incredible.

Thank you for posting.

Hope you find the reason this happened.

Explain the Lupine thing.

Lupines cover some fields here starting July 1st.
 
Kid to kid

USU study of baby goats offers hope for human children

By Pat Bohm Trostle

features writer

The Poisonous Plant Research Lab at Utah State University may seem like an odd place to generate cutting-edge surgical techniques, yet those methods are offshoots of discoveries at the lab. Prenatal surgery is being used to correct cleft palate in goats.

"That's not our goal," said research scientist Kip Panter. "It's a spin-off benefit. Do the animal research and then just by serendipity, it moves off into the human side."

Longtime lab technician Terrie Wierenga said the federal lab's mission is "To investigate the effects of poisonous plants on livestock."

Investigating prenatal cleft palate surgery in goats might be considered a stretch for livestock research.

"It is," said Panter. "But we call it a spin-off benefit. We're able to identify toxins that are new, and identify the physiological effects."

Meanwhile, biomedical researchers also could use the animal models, as they looked for ways to heal human defects.

Soon after the poisonous plant lab was established in 1955 on the campus of USU, the only one in the country, lab scientists were looking into a devastating disease crooked calf syndrome. Lynn James and James LeGrand Shupe found that cleft palate and malformed bones were caused in newborn calves when the pregnant cows ate lupine plants. Later, researchers discovered other plants, including wild tobacco, caused the same twisted limbs and cleft palate. Wild tobacco, Nicotiana glauca, contains a toxin that causes the disease. Richard Keeler, a poisonous plant lab chemist, now retired, identified anabasine as the poison.

As recently as last spring, there were very large losses of cattle near Bear Lake due to crooked calf disease, Panter said.

When the lab attempted to study the cause of the problem in cattle, they found that cattle were difficult to work with because of their large size. Goats, especially a small breed called Spanish goat, were better. When pregnant goats were dosed with anabasine, their fetuses were affected in the same way cattle fetuses were by lupine.

"We used ultrasound to determine what the compound does to the fetus," Panter said. "We found that these alkaloids cross the placenta and immobilize the fetus."

Immobility in the womb resulted in twisted limbs and spine and a cleft palate in the goat fetus and newborn kid. Because of the immobility, the tongue never descended from the roof of the mouth, so the tongue mechanically blocked the closure of the palate.

"That's what causes the cleft palate," Panter said. In later work, they defined a very narrow induction period in the goat of bout seven days, at 35 to 41 days pregnancy. "At that time, you just get the cleft palate," he said. "You don't get the crooked limbs associated with crooked calf syndrome. That was very interesting to an MD plastic surgeon at Brown University."

That physician, Jeffrey Weinzweig, wanted to know if the lab could produce goats with cleft palates for biomedical research. So while the lab was interested in defining the induction period in cattle more specifically, "it was ideal for the biomedical research he was starting," Panter explained.

The Poisonous Plant Research Lab has collaborated with Weinzweig since 1994. While the

lab is a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service and federally funded, Panter explained the biomedical research is grant-funded through Brown University.

"They're applying for an National Institues of Health grant right now," added Panter.

Weinzweig found the anabasine-induced cleft palate in goats preferable for research on repairing the condition. In the early stages of research, cleft palate was actually surgically induced in sheep fetuses. Then, a few days later, the fetal lamb's palate would be repaired.

The research animals are treated humanely, Panter said. Animals are anesthetized during surgery and the procedures are done under sterile conditions. Although the young goats with cleft palate are eventually euthanized, so that their cranial structures can be measured and the tissues examined, the mother goats are given away to petting zoos, said Wierenga.

"We go through animal protocols for the research and through the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. Everything is approved through the animal protocols," Panter said.

Remarkably, a fetus who undergoes surgery does not form scar tissue as it heals, which has long-lasting effects in the case of cleft palate both in humans and grazing animals.

"The fetus has an inherent ability to repair scarlessly up to about 100 days gestation, Panter said. "Same in a goat, same in a human."

If the surgery is to repair a cleft palate, not only does the fetus heal without scars, but all the malformations of face and jaw which occur later in fetal development do not come to pass. Although not an approved technique at present, fetal surgery to correct cleft palate in humans could spare children multiple surgeries.

According to research documents published jointly by poisonous plant researchers and physicians, "Children born with cleft palate often undergo a series of operations to correct the ensuing deformities, only the first of which is the actual palate repair at the age of 6-12 months. For many children, speech remains a major problem as well as craniofacial development."

Panter said that the baby goats who have undergone cleft palate repair in utero make sounds that are the same as kids who developed normally. This indicates that human children may well be able to speak normally without further surgeries after fetal cleft palate repair.

"It's a 20-minute procedure in goats," Panter said, an astonishingly short time compared to the procedure's far-reaching results. However, the Food and Drug Administration does not currently permit prenatal surgery to correct non-life-threatening conditions in humans.

Nevertheless, the in utero surgical technique in goats "is pretty well done now," said Panter. "The success rate is great."

The researchers know there is still some way to go before prenatal cleft palate surgery is proposed to the Food and Drug Administration as a surgical technique for human fetuses.

Biomedical research is continuing, he said, to normalize jaw structure after birth if prenatal correction of cleft palate was not performed.

Meanwhile, the plant lab is continuing work to understand how harmful plant chemicals, such as anabasine, pass from the mother to the fetus.

--------

On the Net:

Poisonous Plant Research Lab: http://www.pprl.usu.edu/


(yes, we have a mystery weed that turns out to be some type of lupine in a small part of the pasture. its yellow flowering and looks very similar to "bush lupine". the cows pretty much leave it alone so that should have been a give away thats its poisonous but i mowed that area last year about the time that this fetus would have been a month or two along, which is when it would have this effect. i bet she accidentally ingested some then.)
 
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Beefy,

EXCELLANT Information.

I am copying it out and giving it to a new goat farmer who also raises perennials for the Farmers Market.
She has 2 acres of Lupines, AND mentioned last year that she had 2 deformed kids born.

But her breeding season is way after the lupines have died off.
Wonder if DRIED lupines in her hay or compost pile could cause a problem as well.

Thanks again for sharing your unique photo and valuable information with us all.

Am Sorry for the loss of the calf.
 
yes, lupine in hay can be the culprit. i remember reading that at some point.
 
Beefy":3vh1950d said:
milkmaid, i'm wonderind if this is what was wrong with your calf with the crooked neck? what ever happened to it?

I've wondered about that occasionally too. Ended up shooting him.

We do have lupines in our area of the world too - ours are blue and purple though, not yellow.
 
Beefy, thanks for posting. Sorry this happened but thanks for sharing. It is a very interesting and informative post.
 
One of those pics looks like a bluebonnet. Is a bluebonnet a lupine? We have those in our pasture and a hay field we were planning on cutting this year. If they are, then that field is out.
 
yes, bluebonnet is a lupine. however:

Texas' state flower, the bluebonnet, is harmless, but its cousin, the mountain lupine, is not and is highly toxic, says Reagor. It is found in the Big Bend area.
 

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