LisaW
Active member
We discovered on Friday morning that our oldest cow, about 12 or 13 yrs old, had calved. Her calfs have been generally smaller in the past two years and have a rough start. They take longer to stand and are weaker the first few days than any other calves we have. But they turn out just fine and are as strong and as big as the others.
We were gone all day Saturday.
Sunday morning we found the calf in a terrible state. She was quite dehydrated and too weak to even raise her head. It looked like she hadn't sucked at all Saturday and hadn't moved from the spot where we saw her on Friday evening. This was unexpected. We tube fed the calf because it would not suck. After a bit it got up but it's back hooves are turned under and it's walking on it's pasterns. As it would walk yesterday we noticed that it would only walk in right hand circles, rarely a straight line. It never raises it's head on it's own but walks in circles, somewhat hunched, with its head down. It doesn't seem to recognize anything or react to anything other than the tube feeding.
We have not seen it suck but this morning I think it had because it's belly was full and the mama was a bit less full. It was up and walking on it's hooves today but the lower legs/joints look very strange. Later this morning I'll go out and see if it'll suck my fingers, that'll give me a clue if it's sucking reflexes are working at all.
Does anyone have any suggestions? We don't have a pen to put them in together and the corral is in the winter pasture. We can move them, but there's no water source there or shade/wind/rain protection.
Now, a bit of info that may be related. We discovered tansy in our hay this winter. One cow must have gotten the most of it because she reacted quite badly. The vet came and said she looked okay and if she'd abort the calf it would have happened around that time. None of the other cows seemed to show any signs of the tansy (or whatever was in the hay). We did replace all the hay for the rest of the season with hay from another source. But if this cow had gotten the tansy as well, would it cause neurological development problems in the calf? This happened 5 months ago so the calves would have been at about 4 months gestation.
Thanks a bunch.
We were gone all day Saturday.
Sunday morning we found the calf in a terrible state. She was quite dehydrated and too weak to even raise her head. It looked like she hadn't sucked at all Saturday and hadn't moved from the spot where we saw her on Friday evening. This was unexpected. We tube fed the calf because it would not suck. After a bit it got up but it's back hooves are turned under and it's walking on it's pasterns. As it would walk yesterday we noticed that it would only walk in right hand circles, rarely a straight line. It never raises it's head on it's own but walks in circles, somewhat hunched, with its head down. It doesn't seem to recognize anything or react to anything other than the tube feeding.
We have not seen it suck but this morning I think it had because it's belly was full and the mama was a bit less full. It was up and walking on it's hooves today but the lower legs/joints look very strange. Later this morning I'll go out and see if it'll suck my fingers, that'll give me a clue if it's sucking reflexes are working at all.
Does anyone have any suggestions? We don't have a pen to put them in together and the corral is in the winter pasture. We can move them, but there's no water source there or shade/wind/rain protection.
Now, a bit of info that may be related. We discovered tansy in our hay this winter. One cow must have gotten the most of it because she reacted quite badly. The vet came and said she looked okay and if she'd abort the calf it would have happened around that time. None of the other cows seemed to show any signs of the tansy (or whatever was in the hay). We did replace all the hay for the rest of the season with hay from another source. But if this cow had gotten the tansy as well, would it cause neurological development problems in the calf? This happened 5 months ago so the calves would have been at about 4 months gestation.
Thanks a bunch.