Very interesting.
So just an odd birth defect?
Did the vet give any clues as to cause? Too much round up? Sick cow? Cow ate something it shouldn't have? Just a freak thing?
And did the vet check that calf for an underbite? Or any other underdeveloped stuff?
They didn't venture any guesses as to the cause but the rest of the calf was normal. Now the only major questions I can think of are how it will look at 6 months and if there's anything odd about the reproductive tract when she's old enough to breed. Hopefully this is the only surprise.
The cow wasn't exposed to roundup or herbicides that I'm aware of so I think it's safe to cross that one off the list. I've got my fingers crossed that I was just the lucky beneficiary of one of those rare defects!
I didn't think the vet would find an eyeball, since the calf's small eye looked similar to malformed eyes I have observed. What I have tried many times to explain is that pesticides like the high use insecticides called neonicotinoids, especially imidacloprid and herbicides like glyphosate/Roundup, 2,4-D and other high use herbicides have been found in tests of air, rain and snow, surface water and on foliage all over North America. When the rain or snow falls on the grass or other foliage eaten by livestock or wildlife, the animal is exposed to varying amounts of the pesticides in every bite of foliage. Likely a primary reason that grazing animal newborns appear to be more highly affected than carnivore newborns is that the pregnant grazing animals eat many pounds of foliage each day, in addition to what they get by drinking water and breathing. If the grazing animal is domestic and is fed grain, the exposure is even greater, especially to Glyphosate Based Herbicides like Roundup, because that is sprayed on grain right before it is harvested. I guess you never heard about the high the levels of glyphosate found by testing Cherrios and other grain based products fed to children? On deer fawns from does deliberately exposed to imidacloprid, they not only had underdeveloped facial bones - underbite or overbite, they had disrupted development of the reproductive organs. Domestic livestock that we documented in Montana had the same birth defects as the white-tailed deer in Montana and in the South Dakota study. Testing of WTD in North Dakota and Minnesota showed fairly high levels of imidacloprid in hunter-killed deer far from fields where imidacloprid was used.
(Berheim, E.H., Jenks, J.A., Lundgren, J.G., Michel, E.S., Grove, D., Jensen, W.F., 2019. Effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on physiology and reproductive characteristics of captive female and fawn white-tailed deer. Sci. Rep.9:4534
. https:// doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-40994-9.)
she follows me around like a little puppy too so hopefully she imparts some of that disposition on her flush mates at weaning time
