What did I do? (Calving intervention required for new cows)

[tup]

we raise limosuine cattle and have no calving problems. uncle next store, raises even better calves out of gelbies. but i know a farmer down the road with bit of flat land who raises up angus and boy oh boy are his cows nice. i think always to watch your first timers when they freshen. i might gently say that if your not wantin to keep a carin eye on your cows at this important time, i don't know.... any cow, even a seasoned one who drop a calf with no more thought than droppin a turd can have a trouble. its farmin and it all comes with the territory. relax and think much of your new cows. stand behind your choice. i never have bad to say about any breed they all have their good points. (and ya never know if the breed your bad mouthin, is the breed your neighbor is proud of lol.) i hope i didn't say too much, i'm tryin to encourage, i guess

 

[Brandonm22]

I wouldn't worry too much about midwifing the calves. I raised the same group of cows both fulltime and there very rarely (once a day or less). When you are with them full time where you can check them at dawn, at lunch, before dinner, after dinner, and after the 10:00 o'clock news you pull more calves than you do when you can't give that kind of time committment. Most of those cows PROBABLY would be fine if you had not used the rope (or ob chains).

 

[KMacGinley]

The cow hides the calf, usually in tall grass or brush, if that is on the other side of the fence she will push it through the fence to hide.

My experience with angus is that they are not hard calvers. If the guy you bought them from was having problems with 20%, I can see why he sold them. I hope you didn't buy the 20%.

Try Jersey's and Dexters for calving ease.

 

[Turin53]

I almost lost my heifer when our neighbor's bull (angus/brahma cross) talked her into grazing his field. We lost a bull calf and the girl was down for about two weeks. Got more info about six months later from the guy that he had lost four holsteins because of birth complications. Oh and he did mention that the other guy he let the bull breed his herd had lost six. This bull is hugh and I now have a "little" (about 1400 lbs)red angus bull to do the breeding. Maybe the guy who sold the cows to you has the brother to "Bully". Good luck on the rest of the births.

 

[Alan]

The cow hides the calf, usually in tall grass or brush, if that is on the other side of the fence she will push it through the fence to hide.

My wife has a cow that she likes a bit better than the others, only because it knows it gets grain when she calls her. Well, she had a 24 hour old calf that "went missing", my wife walked the pasture of a couple of hours (all unknown to me), she then came and asked for my help. Well, I walked the pasture for another hour looking for this calf, all while mom cow was grazing without a care in the world, I know this calf was not in the pasture and I knew that mom had her tucked away some where, but I wanted to help my wife..... yea, the calf was lying next to mom in the morning and my wife was happy.

Alan

 

[dun]

When a newborn goes missing, if the cow isn;t concerned I just leave well enough alone unless we're in one of the coyotes running through every night periods.

 

[Victoria]

I think you said that well tup.
There are hard calving angus and easy calving angus but as a breed they aren't known for being hard calving. The guy may have just told you 20% because he wants you to watch them and not expect no problems. You can take the easiest calving bull and cow and still get a leg back or twins that are trying to come together. We switched to Red Angus from other breeds partly because we don't have the pulls we once did, they are easy calving but I still watch for problems because you never know, especially with heifers. Some of them just get plain scared because they have no clue what is going on and by second year they are great.
msscamp was dead on with her statements. You don't want to watch cattle or deal with cattle problems then the only way to do it is to not have cattle. They take time and effort but at the end of a good calving season it is well worth it.

 

[Anonymous]

A man told me once that the only way not to have calving problems is to not have calves. The way I see it you are going to have a few problems every now and then. I had 18 calves last year by all hiefers and lost 2. Had to pull both and they were bred to low birth wieght Angus bull. 89% unassisted the way I see it isn't to bad but still looking for 100%.

 

[dun]

A man told me once that the only way not to have calving problems is to not have calves. The way I see it you are going to have a few problems every now and then. I had 18 calves last year by all hiefers and lost 2. Had to pull both and they were bred to low birth wieght Angus bull. 89% unassisted the way I see it isn't to bad but still looking for 100%.

There was a gent locally that said unless you're pulling 10% of your calves you aren;t challenging your cows. He's now out of the business.

 

[Anonymous]

Dun,Its just hard to predict nature.

 

[Aero]

A man told me once that the only way not to have calving problems is to not have calves. The way I see it you are going to have a few problems every now and then. I had 18 calves last year by all hiefers and lost 2. Had to pull both and they were bred to low birth wieght Angus bull. 89% unassisted the way I see it isn't to bad but still looking for 100%.

to my knowledge, in the last 3 years with 150+ non-ET registered calves we have pulled 1 calf and probably another 150 commercial calves out of our Angus bulls with 2 pulls. a few malpresentations but pulling is very rarely needed using proven bulls on good cows. i cant imagine having to pull 5+% of calves.

ET calves are different for many reasons. We have had some problems with calves out of commercial cows due to extra variation in ET calf birth weights.

 

[dun]

Dun,Its just hard to predict nature.

True, but stupidity is a lot easier to predict. His 10% got to be closer to 60-70%, That's why he's no longer in the business.