Large Teats

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Anonymous

I have a cow that calved on March 2, and her teats are so large the calf cannot nurse. Are large teats caused by genetics, management or what?
 
Take her to the sale barn, she's going to be nothing but trouble. Remeber the first rule ruthless culling of the herd. This will save you a lot of headaches in the future.
 
I have had this befor. It is some times genetic I hear. There are also some hormones that are given to cattle at a young age that warn that when given can cause nipple elongation and to become larger. To answer what would I do. You can take a needle made for this and drain the milk to allow the calf to nurse. Next let the calf nurse and keep the cow off of any thing that is rich, like cubes. Just feed her some tough hay. When the calf gets bigger you can sale 2 instead of just one. Pain in the butt yes. Worth the time if she is calm. If she is a mean one I would sale her. No matter what the previous post to you were right, she needs to go to the sale barn. I guesse the real question is, how much time do you want to spend? Hope this helps.
 
gertman":nie5y6un said:
I have a cow that calved on March 2, and her teats are so large the calf cannot nurse. Are large teats caused by genetics, management or what?

Genetics. If you ever get a chance to see a set of dairy EPDs, you'd be surprised at the EPDs for just udders. They have everything from udder attachement, size of teats, to angle of teats. Sell her as soon as you can and don't keep any daughters. It never gets any better.
 
Dad has a cow that is an angusXherefordxcharolais and she has two balloon teats. The front two got bigger and bigger every year. every once in a while she would have a calf that would nurse 3 of the four but i still had to keep an eye on her calves to make sure they nursed at all. shes probably the most fertile cow we have and so every year she would be so close to calving when we got ready to cull that we kept her around. she raises excellent calves with only two functioning teats but i would never keep any of her heifers. she inherited the big teat gene(s) from her dad, a charolais bull. anyway, her teats got so big that she (or another cow) stepped on them (either when she was lying down or trying to get up) and so my point is you need to cull the cow b/c she will be trouble down the road whether it is getting the calf to nurse or doctoring a stepped-on teat.
 

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