No Tail

Help Support CattleToday:

The calf was only a few hours old when I discovered it. The navel was still wet but the calf was dried off and nursing. The area where the tail should be is all grown over with hair. I felt it to see if it had a nub under the skin and felt nothing. This is a birth defect and I think a relatively rare one. I asked a dairyman who milks a lot of cows about it. He said he had only seen it once or twice.
The calf is now 10 days old. She seems healthy and normal other than the missing tail. She is out of a cross bred simi cow I bought a month ago at a bred cow sale. The calf is solid black so I am asuming that the bull was an angus.
The cow was preg checked by the vet at the sale to be 6 months bred. She had a full term calf 3 weeks later. I gave the vet a ration about this. I said that he pinched off the tail when he did the preg check. He said that the lack of a tail is why his preg check off by so much.
The calf will be two months older than the rest of the calves and have no tail so she may not fit into the group of calves next fall. But a healthy calf with no tail is better than no calf at all.
Dave
 
Once in a great while a calf is born with no tail. I have had a couple over the years. Dave, like I have said before, you are going to have to wholesale that calf, because you wont be able to RETAIL him
 
stocky":6tpiq5ei said:
Once in a great while a calf is born with no tail. I have had a couple over the years. Dave, like I have said before, you are going to have to wholesale that calf, because you wont be able to RETAIL him

That was awful!! Bbbaaaaaddddd jokes! :( :roll: :( :p
 
Jersey Lilly - that web site was an article about the tails on SPERM - not calves. Tailess sperm does not produce tailess calves :shock: :D
And the article you read was probably about sperm also, because nutrition would have more of an affect on sperm than the development of parts & pieces of a calf. :D
 
Knew a guy who had a tailless haifer a few years ago. She was by a Charolais bull, and had no problem growing out. Was actually a pretty nice heifer besides her tail being gone.
 
Neighbours just south and east of us had a tail-less heifer born last year. "Bummie" as they called her, was pretty much straight Simmie and grew just as well as their other calves.

She also was like the calf you described: totally tail-less. Not even a stub or bob. Looked kind of weird, but her cow didn't seem to hold it against her. They kept her back for freezer beef though as the buyers would surely have docked them on her (no pun intended).

Take care.
 
I have seen this one time before - a heifer calf born without a tail. She was a small calf and did not seem like she was fully developed. The calf died with a few hours after birth. She would not nurse and was having trouble breathing. The sire and dam were also a close relation (uncle/niece), which I believe was the cause.
 

Latest posts

Top