Teen pregnancies calving

[Dave]

So as I have stated before here I am raising a bunch of purchased heifers. I ended up with several (too many) teen pregnancy heifers. I have had several of them calf unassisted but with a dead calf. Had another one do this yesterday. Heifer is fine but the calf was dead when I found it. The calf appeared to be full term or near full term. Frame wise the calf is normal size but thin. This is the third one of these, full sized but thin and dead calves. This heifer is on real good grass pasture with free choice minerals.
I really didn't want the teen pregs so it doesn't bother me too much to lose the calf. I will just go another way with the heifer. And actually I am real happy that I am just losing the calves and not the heifers. But I am certainly curious about these thin calves that appear to be born dead or die very shortly after being born. Any ideas?

 

[redcowsrule33]

If the heifers are in good body condition I would say it's time to get a calf necropsied including a PI test on the calf.

 

[Jessica06]

If the heifers are in good body condition I would say it's time to get a calf necropsied including a PI test on the calf.

I agree. That's a lot of money down the drain.

 

[Chris H]

Were you the one that gave shots to abort them after you discovered some were pregnant? Would that have affected the development of the calf if it wasn't aborted?

2nd the PI test.

Do you have any idea what the sire might be? If it was jersey or longhorn, those might be normal sized calves.

 

[cow pollinater]

What kind of condition were they in when you bought them? I bought a dozen bred heifers that were a little thin and put them on good grass two months before they calved but it was to late for the calves and I wound up with seven live and only three that were worth having. Those same heifers have done just fine since then.

 

[Dave]

The heifers have all been in good condition. There is some variation. I purchased 70 heifers over about a 3 month time frame. I didn't buy any thin heifers. And they have been well fed and on a mineral program since arriving at my place. They also went through a full vaccination program, Bova Shield Gold (twice), 8 way (twice), One Shot, pink eye, and wormed . The heifers were all PI tested. Every time I put together 25 head of new ones I ear notched and sent off for testing. I had one positive. She was pulled as soon as I got the test results. The rest of the heifers including this last one to calf tested negative. I never gave them anything to abort calves. I did have 4 that aborted after getting two rounds of modified live vaccine. These three that calved later all received that same treatment but carried the calves for months after those vaccines. I talked to my vet and he was stumped. And he is a pretty good cow vet.

For me this was more of a matter of curiosity. The first two lost their calves early enough to go out with the clean up bulls and hopefully breed and fit into the group. This last one is too late for that so she will be grass fed beef this fall. There just isn't much of a market for teen preg heifers here. Even teen heifers who have had their calf that you sell as a pair don't sell well here. Losing the calves really didn't cost my much of anything unless I intended to winter the pair and I am not going to do that. They were all short bred enough that one couldn't visually notice it when I bought them, because I sure didn't want or intend to buy heifers calving at 14-17 months.