Lost a heifer .

[JSCATTLE]

Yesterday evening the wife noticed one of our heifers acting funny .. we were outside boiling crawfish when she saw her pacing and balling .. problem is she was only 13 months old . She never swelled up on the backend and yesterday was the first signs of bag swelling. She tried for about an hour before we tried to help .. she was only 600 pounds at the most. The calf was so big I couldn't get the head through the pelvis. Both its front legs would barley fit through. I tried for 2 and a half hours to pull it because none of the vets would answer the phone. I'm guessing good Friday had something to do with it .. calf stopped showing signs of life and she gave up and layed down in the shoot.
About midnight I sent the wife and kids inside and stopped her suffering .. dang heifer had to of bred at 4 months old .. I wrote down when she was born last year .. from now on if I keep one she's getting lute when I pull her off the cow .
Bad thing is her mom calved at 16 months old . I should have known to lute her because of that.
I cut the calf out this morning and it weighed 105 lbs on my scale we hang deer on .. it's head was almost wouldn't fit in a 5 gallon bucket .

 

[TCRanch]

I'm sorry to hear that and I once had a similar situation but we didn't find the heifer in time - she was also bred at 4 months. Hard lesson learned so we started giving all the heifers lute when we wean. But lute isn't a guarantee and ended up with another bred heifer that had to have a c-section (ended up selling her). Another hard lesson learned so we started pulling the bulls at least a month prior to weaning in addition to the lute and haven't had an "oops" since.

 

[farmerjan]

Friend had a jersey heifer get bred at about 6 months. Didn't realize it I guess, old farmer, and when she started to bag it was too late to abort. She died a horrible death trying to calve and I swore after that I would be more careful and watchful....but sometimes it just happens. So sorry you had to go through that and glad at least you could save her the ultimate agony of suffering a long drawn out death by calving. One of the reasons we have controlled breeding times, so the likely hood of a too young heifer getting bred is minimized. But you can't control anything 100%. Especially when things like a neighbors bull gets in, or they just come in heat way too young.

That was a HUGE calf in a heifer that small. No way you could have saved her or it unless by C-section, and who knows if even then. We do our best....

 

[JSCATTLE]

I'm not gonna let one suffer. Killing a critter that's in bad shape doesn't bother me . I need to do a better job on prevention for sure. I'm glad she wasn't at the farm as I normally raise heifers at my house to keep the Bulls away. I don't know why this calf was so big . Most are born about 60 lbs even on my older cows. I think the problem is her sire is a big hereford bull that threw pretty big calves but I put him on f1 brangus cows so it was never a problem . Looking at the calf he's the one that bred her. My brangus bull throws poodle size calves . Sold the hereford bull last week .. from now on it will be lbw brangus on my cows.

 

[Nesikep]

That sucks.. you did all you could.

 

[Putangitangi]

A timely warning for me, thank you. I have a 200-day-old calf being weaned today, found her with what looked like some mucous about two months ago, just before I pulled the bulls. I'll get her checked by the vet. I don't routinely lute (or whatever our equivalent is) them and have only twice before seen 4-month heifers on heat. In both cases I was able to get them away from the bulls in time.