Repro tract

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bandit80

bandit80

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Mar 4, 2008
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NE Kansas
Brother and I brought our heifers off of pasture last weekend. We also had 6 heifers for a neighbor that ran with ours. His were not AI'd, just put in the pasture with the bull. While I was pregging, one of our neighbor's heifers appeared to have no reproductive tract. I could not locate a cervix, uterine horns, nothing. Now I am not a vet, and don't claim to be an expert preg checker, but I have never had a problem locating a reproductive tract before.

My question is, do freemartins lack a reproductive tract, or if it is missing, is this something just off the wall.
 
I believe freemartins have a repro tract, but the ovaries are just nonfunctioning. Has the heifer ever been observed in heat? If she has, then she has a tract...get a second opinion.
 
Freemartins will usually lack everything or most everything... I've run across one that was missing a uterine horn but had everything else. Generally though, so my vet tells me, they feel like a steer internally.
 
Some do, some don;t. Depends on the degree that the hormones from the bull affected her development. I've seen them all the way from fully funtional to the point of ovulating but not enough hormones to maintain the pregnancy to one with a vestule penis.
 
milkmaid":2d8mtgs8 said:
Freemartins will usually lack everything or most everything... I've run across one that was missing a uterine horn but had everything else. Generally though, so my vet tells me, they feel like a steer internally.
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My brother has been known to run a steer in with the females while preg checking just to see if I have any idea what I am doing. I thought this is what he had done this time. But it was not. This is exactly what this one felt like. I haven't talked to the owner to see if he took her to a vet or if she is in fact a twin to a bull.
 
bandit80":1dwpls18 said:
I haven't talked to the owner to see if he took her to a vet or if she is in fact a twin to a bull.
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Here's another "catch" to the situtation. If she was conceived with a bull and the bull was reabsorbed or didn;t implant and was sloughed, she wouldn;t have been born twin to a bull but she would still be a freemartin
 
dun":9978zi41 said:
bandit80":9978zi41 said:
I haven't talked to the owner to see if he took her to a vet or if she is in fact a twin to a bull.
Click to expand...

Here's another "catch" to the situtation. If she was conceived with a bull and the bull was reabsorbed or didn;t implant and was sloughed, she wouldn;t have been born twin to a bull but she would still be a freemartin
Click to expand...

Just to complicate things even more, a freemartin can be completely normal as a young calf and just not develope any further when puberty would normally start.

The freemartins I've palpated varied from completely lacking a reproductice tract to an infantile but otherwise normal reproductive tract to a malformed reproductive tract.

On the outside some have completely normal vulvas, most have normal but small vulvas and others have just a few hair tufts where the vulva would normally be.
 
in a.i. school we had one that had no opening in the cervix. the students couldn't get it, so the instructor was going to show them how and he couldn't either no opening.
 

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