Sore leg on a bred heifer.

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Ojp6

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I had a bred heifer in the alley by the head catch tonight. She tried to jump over the side when the cows in front of her weren't moving fast enough. She hung one of her front legs right above the hoof. It was stuck between a gate and a post on the hinge side. She wedged it to where she was hung pretty bad and most of her weight was on that leg and she was pretty much sitting down. All her weight was holding that leg down in that gap and we couldn't get it lifted out of there by hand. We used a skid loader to help lift her out and we were able to get the leg out before it broke.

Obviously she is going to be extremely sore for a while and it's probably gonna swell up pretty big. It was started swelling pretty good this morning. How would you go about treating this? She is bred 6 months.
 
A dozen adult people aspirin morning and night for a week to a couple of weeks. Just toss them in a handful of grain and she'll clean them right up.
 
dun":3aq1rqgn said:
A dozen adult people aspirin morning and night for a week to a couple of weeks. Just toss them in a handful of grain and she'll clean them right up.

When you say aspirin, you don't mean Tylenol or ibuprofen, right?
 
Txpiney":o4bhb5k3 said:
dun":o4bhb5k3 said:
A dozen adult people aspirin morning and night for a week to a couple of weeks. Just toss them in a handful of grain and she'll clean them right up.

When you say aspirin, you don't mean Tylenol or ibuprofen, right?
NOOOOO!! Cows cannot have tylenol... only Acetylsalisic acid (ASA).. can't remember if they can tolerate Ibuprofen.

Dexamethasone would work, but will cause her to calf now, which is probably not what you want.

You can get "cow sized" aspirin as well.

I had one fracture her front leg, I just penned her where she didn't need to walk far to water or hay and in a few weeks she was back to normal
 
Yup, regular aspirin works in their feed - some times I drizzle molasses over it. You can also get aspirin boluses or flavored powdered aspirin (molasses or apple) and sprinkle it in their feed. Ditto on DMSO and especially the gloves :)
 
She's in a small pen. It is swelled a little but not as bad as expected. She limps but is putting a quite a bit of weight on it so I think she may be alright. She was hung off to the point that pretty much all of he weight was hanging on bottom that one leg so I'm pretty happy with how she it doing so far
 
I just posted in another thread about a similar situation I had with a heifer that jumped a gate and hurt her foot. She was limping pretty bad for a few days but I was worried about trying to get her penned up to treat her for fear of causing further stress or injury. I went with a very experienced dairy friend's advice of leaving her alone as long as she is putting at least a little weight on it and coming up for feed and water which she was. It's taken about a month but she is doing pretty well now and you have to watch pretty close to even notice a limp.
 

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