Yearling heifer with distended abdomen

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ptnew

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My husband and I raise Longhorns and we have a heifer calf, 11 months old right now, who is very small, and has a HUGE abdomen. She is distended on both sides , not in any obvious distress, not pregnant, breathing fine, passing gas, pooping and burping, so we ruled out bloat, but we can not figure out what the heck is wrong with her. We have several other animals(3 steer and 1 cow, along with 3 goats) and all of them seem to be fine. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what it might be? We have wormed her twice in the last year. It is winter now and she gets bullied alot because of her size....out in the cold.Thanks for any suggestions............
 
Probably should call the vet. With that much info anything else is just a guess.
 
Thanks for your suggestion......unfortunately, we have already been through the vet! She told us that she was pregnant and quickly proceeded to give her Lutalyce to abort the fetus....said she was too small to survive delivery and would need a c-section, would probably die from the complications...she is a pet and we were heartbroken! Thank God we optede not to do anything.....because noting happened at all! No dialation, not delivery...no nothin! Then we thought there might be an obstruction or a tumor...like I mentioned before, she is really small for her age....eats a lot of hay, but gets bullied and is not aggressive with the grain buckets either.. Do you think she might be lacking in nutrients? Would that cause this distention? I appreciate any outside suggestions.
 
I don't know . If she is not bloated then my guess is that she is just full of hay . Post a pic .

Larry
 
I am a little confused..How far along did your vet think she was when she palpated your heifer.What do you mean you opted to do nothing . Need more info.

Pic would be helpful as Larry suggested.
 
hillsdown":1toqxrww said:
I am a little confused..How far along did your vet think she was when she palpated your heifer.What do you mean you opted to do nothing . Need more info.

Pic would be helpful as Larry suggested.

Me too. If the vet said she was pregnant and you did nothing, then, voila, she's still pregnant. Take her back to the vet and be prepared for a C-section. Makes me think of the old joke about the difference between a pregnant woman and a lightbulb.
 
In response to your comment ryates......the vet was already out to our farm ok, and she gave a shot of Lutalyce, as I mentioned previously, and told us to watch for "signs" of termination..ie: dialation and discharge ect. with me so far??????? She was unable to do a rectal exam/palpation because our heifer is too small....she proceeded to push with her fist into the calf's side and mention that she thinks she could feel a head, but was not sure and that she could possibly be around 4 months pregnant. The shot was given to her one week ago today....still with no outcome. I will post a photo when I return home on Saturday. It is possible that she could be full of "hay" I guess...lol. As far as opting to do nothing, well, that is what my husband and I had decided to do together since the vet said that her chances of surviving this "ordeal" was around 2%....if she was indeed pregnant. There are no vets nearby with a rectal sonoprobe to positively determine pregnancy so..............here we are. We were told by the vet, as I mentioned in a previous blog, that even if she was pregnant, she could die from peritonitis ect. so no matter what we decided to do, the outcome for her was grim. Thanks again for your constructive criticism..........
 
I see why you're upset but it's not that people are messin with you I think they missed the part about the LUTE. The hard thing to understand is if she was only 4 months pregnant that would NOT be the cause of her being that big. So I think you still have another problem.

Chances are she sluffed the calf and you don't know it, but if she looks like that, there are other problems.
 
By 4 months lute isn;t real effective at aborting a pregnancy
 
ptnew":3f8bgegz said:
My husband and I raise Longhorns and we have a heifer calf, 11 months old right now, who is very small, and has a HUGE abdomen. She is distended on both sides , not in any obvious distress, not pregnant, breathing fine, passing gas, pooping and burping, so we ruled out bloat, but we can not figure out what the heck is wrong with her. We have several other animals(3 steer and 1 cow, along with 3 goats) and all of them seem to be fine. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what it might be? We have wormed her twice in the last year. It is winter now and she gets bullied alot because of her size....out in the cold.Thanks for any suggestions............
course there always exceptions but aint longhorns slower to reach puberty . she must have been on a sho nuff hot ration too breed at 7 months
 
I am wondering if it is something we call water belly. We see it sometimes in feeder calves, or calves on cows. They get a huge belly, usually on one side and it is something they do recover from. They seem fine otherwise but we always have to cull them and sell.
 
How big is this heifer? I've seen heifers palpated down to 375lbs without issues. A blood test for pregnancy is an option too if your vet(s) can't palpate. Google BioPRYN for info on that. As dun mentioned, Lute won't do much (usually) at 4 months bred.... also, calf is too small at 4 months to bump it from the outside flank of the cow as you described. If the vet can feel the calf it's at least 5 months.

If the heifer isn't bred... could be plenty of other things including bloat, poor nutrition resulting in a stunted animal with a potbelly, digestive upset for some reason... couple wild guesses. Pic available?
 
dun":2n9b6wu3 said:
By 4 months lute isn;t real effective at aborting a pregnancy


That was my point exactly and if the vet did not use dex along with Lute especially if it thought that the animal was at least four months bred than you need a new vet..

My guess is that the heifer is just a poor doer or possibly PI.
 
from my knowledge your heifer would not be "getting round" if she was only 4 months pregnant. And from what i know longhorns mature later. If your heifer is only 11 months(and if she is 4 or 5 months pregnant that would mean she was bred at 7 or 8 months) For longhorns i think that would be virtually impossible. :?

Second thought....If she by some miracle is pregnant would she been within access of a bull a 6-8 months of age?? If she is now i would move her or him! I don't think shes pregnant yet...

And good luck. I would say shes just in that gangly stage where they look like all belly. She will be gaining more muscle soon. give her time.
 
Thanks to everyone for their comments. I am feeling better about her not being pregnant actually....I am leaning more towards the "potbelly" idea. We have done quite a bit of reading and research about Longhorns before we started out on this adventure and we too were under the impression that they were not mature so to speak until 7or 8 months of age. Our vet deals with dairy cattle, and does not have much experience with Longhorns, and she pretty much reamed us out for being careless. We have 5 animals total, 2 steer, a cow with her bull calf(only 5 months old) and our "little" heifer. One of the steer we banded in September, when our heifer was about 6 months old, but we never saw any "activity" although, those are private moments...lol. The vet told us we were careless and will learn from our mistake and as you can imagine, only added to our/my remorse. The breeder we got them from also mentioned that she was far to immature to become pregnant........with that said, I am hoping she recovers somewhat and grows once the weather improves. I did not know that lute , by itself would not work.....wouldn't we have seen something ...some sort of progress? I will post a picture of her this coming weekend. Thanks again to everyone. All information is appreciated.
 
I don't know much about longhorns, but I do know it's possible for some heifers to breed as young as 4 months. I had one get a belly on her in the spring and was shocked when at 13 months and 1 day she went into labor. We had to do a c-section to remove a full term calf. I now lutalayse all of my replacement heifers when I remove the bull.
 
I second BioPRYN if you are concerned about your heifer being pregnant. I have used them to blood test my heifers for pregnancy and they were dead on! A lot cheaper to do that than have the vet come out to preg. check them.
 

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