Fire Sweep Ranch
Well-known member
Seems the black cloud has reared it's ugly head again here....
Today was my first day back for a new semester at the college (Tuesday was canceled because of the snow), so not expecting to find anything (nothing due in heat, no cattle due to calve until the end of the month) and hoping to get out of the field and on to the road, OF COURSE I find our two year old, due with the only embryo calf that stuck in that mating, in labor!
I get the kids to help me bring her to the barn (they had no school, snow day), and I sleeve her. All I can feel is the head and an ear, and can not find the legs. Knowing I was out of my league, and the value of the embryo (W/C Loaded Up x Eriskay), I called my vet (emergency hours - 7AM).
Vet gets there an hour later, and worked on her for some time. He says the calf is really small for gestation (274 days), and not responding to his manipulation - so likely dead. He gets the calf in the correct position and pulls him out. A VERY small calf, and he looks dead. I watched the calf for a few seconds, and all of a sudden it blinked and lifted his head! Vet tells me to drag the calf to the hay and get it stimulated, while he looked for a second calf (remember, this is an EMBRYO). Yep, there is a twin. My daughter and I work over the first calf for what seems like 20 minutes, with me pumping on he chest and rubbing vigorously with dry hay, while my daughter kept shoving straw in the nostril. Once more, the calf jerked, and opened his mouth like he was trying to take a breath, but then nothing (as we continue with our aggressive pumping and nose stimuli). In the mean time, the vet pulls out the second calf, another bull, and declared he is dead (checked for heart beat). He moves over to the calf we are working on and tells us to stop, because he did not have a heart beat either. At that point, I am in tears! He "seemed" to be alive, but we could not save him. In the rush of it all (and me trying to get on the road), I drag the calves to the scale to get a weight (first one 25 pounds, the second one 37.4 pounds), and shove them in a feed sack to dispose of later.
On the way to work, I called my embryologist. The first calf had white on his face, a big splotchy spot, and one on his chin. The second calf, from what I remembered, had none. If they were truly identical, they should be close on the white (not one with and one without). We speculate, and talk for some time. There is NO WAY she was bull bred (no breeding age bulls around, and she was in the show heifer pasture when we put the embryo in her - ONLY show heifers). So it was either a split embryo or two embryos in one straw on accident.
Tonight I came home, checked the cows, and decided to look at the calves again. We take them out of the bag, and discover that the second calf DID have white, it was just a small amount and covered in birth junk. They even both have white on the chin, so it is in fact a split embryo. Bummer for the heifer, it was not her fault and now she has nothing to show for her effort. We have put in a bunch of embryos in the last 10 years, and never had one split, and sure hope it does not happen again!
Here they are on the scale...
Calf number 1 face:
Calf number one chin:
Calf number 2 face:
Calf number 2 chin:
All this to say farming sucks sometimes. Glad it did not happen yesterday, since yesterday was my birthday... :bday:
Today was my first day back for a new semester at the college (Tuesday was canceled because of the snow), so not expecting to find anything (nothing due in heat, no cattle due to calve until the end of the month) and hoping to get out of the field and on to the road, OF COURSE I find our two year old, due with the only embryo calf that stuck in that mating, in labor!
I get the kids to help me bring her to the barn (they had no school, snow day), and I sleeve her. All I can feel is the head and an ear, and can not find the legs. Knowing I was out of my league, and the value of the embryo (W/C Loaded Up x Eriskay), I called my vet (emergency hours - 7AM).
Vet gets there an hour later, and worked on her for some time. He says the calf is really small for gestation (274 days), and not responding to his manipulation - so likely dead. He gets the calf in the correct position and pulls him out. A VERY small calf, and he looks dead. I watched the calf for a few seconds, and all of a sudden it blinked and lifted his head! Vet tells me to drag the calf to the hay and get it stimulated, while he looked for a second calf (remember, this is an EMBRYO). Yep, there is a twin. My daughter and I work over the first calf for what seems like 20 minutes, with me pumping on he chest and rubbing vigorously with dry hay, while my daughter kept shoving straw in the nostril. Once more, the calf jerked, and opened his mouth like he was trying to take a breath, but then nothing (as we continue with our aggressive pumping and nose stimuli). In the mean time, the vet pulls out the second calf, another bull, and declared he is dead (checked for heart beat). He moves over to the calf we are working on and tells us to stop, because he did not have a heart beat either. At that point, I am in tears! He "seemed" to be alive, but we could not save him. In the rush of it all (and me trying to get on the road), I drag the calves to the scale to get a weight (first one 25 pounds, the second one 37.4 pounds), and shove them in a feed sack to dispose of later.
On the way to work, I called my embryologist. The first calf had white on his face, a big splotchy spot, and one on his chin. The second calf, from what I remembered, had none. If they were truly identical, they should be close on the white (not one with and one without). We speculate, and talk for some time. There is NO WAY she was bull bred (no breeding age bulls around, and she was in the show heifer pasture when we put the embryo in her - ONLY show heifers). So it was either a split embryo or two embryos in one straw on accident.
Tonight I came home, checked the cows, and decided to look at the calves again. We take them out of the bag, and discover that the second calf DID have white, it was just a small amount and covered in birth junk. They even both have white on the chin, so it is in fact a split embryo. Bummer for the heifer, it was not her fault and now she has nothing to show for her effort. We have put in a bunch of embryos in the last 10 years, and never had one split, and sure hope it does not happen again!
Here they are on the scale...
Calf number 1 face:
Calf number one chin:
Calf number 2 face:
Calf number 2 chin:
All this to say farming sucks sometimes. Glad it did not happen yesterday, since yesterday was my birthday... :bday: