Friday was NOT a good day

[holly heifer]

Friday morning one of the herf cows decided to calve-
all went well, she presented a nice black baldy heifer, was
up and nursing in less than 30 minutes . :lol: After about
an hour she looked rather distressed and ( bad word inserted
here) it was determined that she had a breech twin. She
had several nice contractions and we delivered it fairly easily.
It was another black baldy heifer the same size as the first one.
But, it had a heartbeat, but was not breathing. We have a
calf " ambu" cleared the airway and ventilated the calf,
gave epi and steroids( in hope of drying up some of the pulmonary edema) I worked the calf for several 2 hours, it
would breathe on its own for a little while and then get
hypoxic and quit breathing. Finally, i quit and walked away.
5 minutes later it was dead. it would have to have been
a bottle calf- cow is not able to feed two) taking it to the
vet clinic for intensive treatment( ventilator,ect) would be
VERY costly. The cow cleaned, first calf is very healthy
and looks great! That evening we sunk the tractor
in the pasture trying to put out round bales. Had to get
help to git er out!

 

[Joy in Texas]

I'm sorry for your loss,but atleast you have one healthy calf. Sometimes as hard as we try we can't save them. You did the right thing,even though I know it was a hard thing to do.
Good luck...

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

Holly - seems like when one thing goes bad -something else has to also.
Don't you love twins??? You ended up with one good healthy heifer, but all that time spent on calving & trying to save the second one sure is a waste. It would have been sooo nice to be done after the first one was up & sucking. I understand - I HATE TWINS!!

 

[HFSimmOH]

Sorry to hear about the second calf but Joy is right at least you have one good calf and the cow is alright. It really sucks to lose both. As far as the backwards calf, we had one in Feb that came backward and did the same thing as you said yours did, good heart beat but didn't care about breathing. We lost that one about 6 hours after it was born.

 

[just learnin]

Sorry about your loss.

 

[ENNOT]

Did you happen to hang the calf up by its hind legs to make sure you got all the fluid out?

 

[holly heifer]

Yes, that was the very first thing I did after breaking the sac. It just was not meant to be, on the other hand, the other
calf is doing great!