Hairless heifer

[cowgirl8]

Its a first for us and apparently for our vet too... This hairless calf was born a couple weeks ago. Luckily, the temps have been survivable. We tried putting clothing on her, but they dont dress cattle for a reason..lol
She's out in the pasture now, one more cold night and hopefully nicer warmer weather for her. If anyone here has ever come across this i'd like to know what you know.

 

[cowgirl8]

We named her Chewy, short for Chupacabra because in person she is the strangest looking thing, bless her heart..

 

[Limomike]

Dont mean to be the bearer or bad news... but its called : hypotrichosis (hairlessness) is a genetic condition seen in many breeds.
If your calf lives, it will probably be very susceptible to weather, heat, wet, cold and sunburns, cold stress etc and susceptible to skin infections and injury. In addition many times there are no sweat glands in calves born with hypotrichosis, so if exposed to heat he may not be able to regulate his temperature by sweating - a hairless calf has the potential to have some problems down the road
All this being said, I did know of one that survived and grew out normal.

 

[branguscowgirl]

I have never seen one like her before. Though nearly every mammal can be affected by this condition.
I hope she does ok for you.

 

[randiliana]

We have one this year too. Not completely hairless, and where she does have hair it's pretty thick, but fine. I've thought about blanketing her but haven't and she's doing OK. Our temps are probably quite a bit cooler too.

 

[Alan]

Doesn't look good for the calf, sorry about that. Another thing to think about is you have at least one carrier in your herd. It's been years since this subject was covered in depth here at CT, you may want to do a search for those post. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe both the bull and the cow have to have to be carriers to produce this. My thoughts, just to lazy this morning to do my own search.

 

[Alan]

I should say we had one also years back, she was not hairless, just very thin hair coat. She weaned okay and went to the sale.

 

[cowgirl8]

Chewy does have some hair, thin, on her back end and peach fuzz over the rest.
I tried covering her but she sweated terribly so i removed it. Luckily, her skin will turn black so it wont be like she's pinked skinned and she should be protected some.
I totally understand that her outlook isnt good. I'm really surprised she's survived this long. If you threw me out naked in this weather i wouldnt survive. I'd keep her up but her mother is really hard to deal with. Out in the pasture she's ok, but she doesnt want locked up and is difficult moving her around in the corral when we need to bring something in. So out they went.
We saved a very tasty looking steer for the freezer this year, was looking forward to eating something that wasnt defected. But, seems we are getting quite a line of defects. We have Sara Palsey, a heifer who walks with a wobble and didnt get bred. We'll eat her. We have HM(hurt mouth), had her face crushed by a falling tree limb during the ice storm we had and cant nurse anymore. Although she's really sweet and i dont think i could eat her.
So, anyone who is interested in a grass fed angus, we'll probably have one for sale later on.. :?

 

[Hook]

What's the common denominator on the defects? Line breeding? Bull?

 

[milkmaid]

Depends on the breed and type of hairlessness.... anything from autosomal recessive to sex-linked dominant inheritance, and then some hairlessness can be blamed on BVD infection in utero and iodine deficiency.

Does the calf have any other abnormalities? dental or cleft palate, genital, tail, etc?

 

[cowgirl8]

All else seems fine. Very healthy calf. The cow is a angus cross but mostly, but is bred to our home grown bull who i dont believe has any angus. He's sim, simbra and brangus mixture...

 

[Hook]

So the bull is SIMM, brahma, and angus crossed. Any shared genetics with the cows? Bein homegrown and all

 

[cowgirl8]

If they are its very distant..The bull is our old school breeding and the cow is young and out of our registered angus bulls and younger angus cows..This is her 3rd calf, first was out of a low BW angus bull and she graduated to the bigger birth bulls. We've been breeding our young angus cows to this certain bull for replacement heifers.

 

[Chris H]

Yes, we had one last year. She was born on Palm Sunday when we had a snow storm. We put her & the mother in the barn for a couple months. She grew enough hair to not get sunburned but lost most again in the fall. During the winter she grew hair again but she wouldn't have survived this winter outside. We lost her mother due to an injury so we put the calf in the barn at 4 months. We'll butcher her in about 3 more months.
Ours is out of registered Herefords. The sire tested negative for the hairless gene. As I understand it, that gene is recessive. Since both parents were normal haired animals both needed to carry the recessive gene to get a hairless calf. I'm debating whether I should test this heifer to see what gene she is carrying to cause this. Edited to add: My black friends say they get sunburned, too. So watch out putting the calf outside.

 

[cowgirl8]

The day she was born, she got sunburned. It was a warm very sunny day. We got them up later in the day but it was too late. Hopefully she'll be like me, after time i become protected as i tan. By early summer i can be out all day and not burn.
We'll have her processed i'm sure. I can see us grilling burgers and when everyone is taking a bite i'll say, "This is Chewy"....Gotta love farm humor..lol

 

[redcowsrule33]

Looks like it could be a severe version of rat tail (congenital hypotrichosis) to me.

 

[cowgirl8]

Update on Chewy.. She's growing a little hair. Still looks weird and isnt growing good. Not sure what we'll do with her. Maybe one of our kids will want to put her in the freezer. We still plan to eat Sarah Palsy

 

[fitz]

Looks like it could be a severe version of rat tail (congenital hypotrichosis) to me.

X2. It looks like a rattail to me.

fitz

 

[cowgirl8]

My main reason for posting this was to find out what she'll end up doing. I pretty much knew the condition. I did remember that we had one new angus back in this herd. I'll be watching him next calving season. He's with heifers, not with this herd this breeding season. He was in there a few weeks until he damaged his penis..Didnt breed any cows after the first couple weeks.

 

[Nesikep]

her front legs look awful!