New calf birth problems, healthy delivery

[rockridgecattle]

Got a story for the night,

Had a hiefer out on her own this evening around 7 pm Tail up, up and down, wandering.
We got her up to the barn and left her in front to get down to business. Went out 2 hours later to see what happened. Jail break, busted post, bent pannel. Ground is frozen, hubby is going to have to do some modifications until the thaw.
Back to the delivery
Decided to check on her. It had now been three hours since we first noticed her. She was not pushing, just laying there.
Into the mat pen, iodine and water to wash the back side, and gloved up. Husband could not get his hand inside, so thought to let her go. By this time it was 10:30 pm. I have smaller hands so i wanted to check. She hadn't pushed out the water sack yet, but i could feet two feet, and it was alive. BUT, one foot had crossed over and was pushing into the side wall. So gentley i worked my way around to reposition the feet. This took a bit as I'm not as strong as my husband. He was off trying to figure what he was going to do about that fence post.
Once the feet were moved and i started to back out, she started to push and out came the water bag. Back in i went to check the postion of the feet. All was well, calf was inside the sack.
We decided to release her from the head gate but leave her in the pen. Once her head was free, she laid down, while we were standing there cleaning up our mess and started to get down to business.
We knew the calf was alive, we knew it was still in the sack, so off we went to the cabin to wait.
An our later just the feet showing, so hubby went to attach the chains to put tension on. Bu this time the nose was out and the tongue was a little swollen. The calf was stubborn and the head seemed awful big. "Get the puller" he said. We got it on and hooked up, clicked it once and the head popped out. He said he hardly tightened up the line. Calf came out. Mooma and calf are okay. Figure close to 85-90 #'s. Will weigh tomorow. Just glad its alive.
We are glad we took the time to check. Had we waited the foot could have held things up to the point of a dead calf. It was larger than we anticipated. The calf threw back to the mooma. 1/2 angus, 1/4 holstien and 1/4 sim. She was bred to a 76# birth weight bull. We have 15 more heifers to calve. I hope not so big.

 

[Beefy]

i had a similar thing happen just recently. a heifer was out in the big pasture and when i went to feed she was laboring like all get out but nothing was showing. i figured i was going to have to pull a breech or something. after i got thru feeding i went and sat near her on the fourwheeler to watch. she strained and strained. finally it looked like her anus prolapsed and then all of the sudden i heard her water bag, which was not visible, break and come gushing out. she promptly got up and moved. anus went back in when that water broke. then she laid down again and pushed and another bag of fluid that was not visible broke and gushed out. she got up and struck out for a new spot. finally i saw one foot show up and then a long time later i could see another though back some. the heifer almost got the head out but couldnt quite do it b/c the leg that was back just a little bit was enough to hang up the shoulders. i wound up pulling the calf. once i got the one leg pulled out evenly it was smooth sailing except the cow had no interest in the calf afterwards, but i kind of figured that was going to happen since she showed no interest in even smelling anything that ever came out of her, much less cleaning it up.

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

Beefy - when you said she broke water & left, I thought the same thing. Normally, they are so intense on slurpping up the liquid. If I have one outdoors & I don't catch her in labor until the water breaks, I sometimes have a difficult time getting her in the barn. They don't want to leave their "nest".

 

[dun]

Had a coe last year that calved during the night with the calves right leg over it's head. She had it by herself but it was dead and had torn her vaginal wall and colon.

 

[Dana Kopp]

We had one two or three years ago, a heifer also whose bull calf's nose wasn't lined up with his feet. It was just off center enough that is kind of "drug" as she pushed. We knew that this bull had been throwing large calves (oops) so I checked on her and when the progress wasn't what I would have expected checked, took me about a second to straighten the head (feet were just coming out) and I can say I helped, but she would have done it on her own, it certainly wasn't a hard pull, I just didn't want to take a chance. Yep, those 95+# calves out of heifers...gotta love that ...but if they can handle that we don't have to worry about them when they are cows, things are nicely stretched!

 

[rockridgecattle]

I know, we did not buy a bull with such a heavy birth weight. he wa slated for about 76# (from memory). The winter was so abnormally cold, like last year, and the calves in the beginning were brutes as well. I guess we fed them to much to keep them warm. UGG