Cow Choking on Placenta

[Clark Club Calves]

Has anyone had a cow choke on her Placenta?  We try and remove it when ever we can but we can not be there all the time. We had one cow die on us a few days after she calved. She was up and eating after she calved everything looked good.  We found placenta in her throat.  Could she have choked on it when she was binning up her cud?

 

[Till-Hill]

Lost dairy heifer 2-3 years ago. Now as soon as anything drops them we toss them over the fence!

 

[knabe]

Pigs and dogs love the stuff.

 

[tamarack]

Lost a cow once saw her calf in the field and looked 20 minutes later and four feet in the air dead as a nit. We had BSE surveillance at the time so I phoned the vet and she came out and said she choked on placenta for sure as it was packed in the cows throat tight.

 

[justintime]

Whenever possible I try to get rid of the placenta when I see one in a calving pen. I came close to losing a cow several years ago, and since then I am always scared of another cow doing the same thing. I have heard some people say that it is important for a cow to eat her placenta as it has some effect on how quickly she will rebreed, but I think this is totally untrue. I think that most research shows that the placenta sits in the rumen and rots for several days and I can't see how that can be very good. The cows I take the placenta from seem to rebreed as fast as any that manage to eat it!

 

[Pleasant Grove Farms]

lost a cow last year from eating her placenta.....licked off baby, fed baby, soon after dead with baby laying beside her.....she had a huge string of placenta in her throat

horrifying sight

 

[GoWyo]

Have heard of it happening twice.  I leave them alone since most calve in the pasture and I never see it anyway.  However, my vet related a story where they worked and worked pulling a calf and got it out alive.  Cow cleaned out after they left the stall and when they came back to check, the cow had choked, fell over and died, on top of the calf, which was also dead.

 

[DCC_Cattle]

It can definitely happen. Had a cow a couple weeks ago that cleaned when we were not in the barn, when I went back out to check on her and the baby, she was eating her afterbirth and all of the sudden started choking. She let a huge cough out and it was like she was blowing a huge bubble of gum. I tried to get in the pen fast enough to grab it out of her mouth, but by then she had swallowed it again. Luckily, it went down okay and she's been fine ever since.

 

[JTM]

I have heard that if you see a cow choking on the placenta that you can stick the handle end of a pitch fork down their throat and push it the rest of the way down essentially clearing the throat. Fortunately I haven't had one die of this yet or have I had to help one.

 

[RyanChandler]

I've never heard of anything like this.  I always wait until the cow has cleaned it all up before I intervene and weigh/ tag the calf.  The last thing I want to do is push her away from that spot and let some scavenger reap the consumption benefits.

 

[Lucky_P]

XBAR,
I've never seen it, either - and had never heard of it happening until sometime in the last year or two - but as others have detailed in this thread, it evidently happens...

50 years in the cattle business, and 30 as a veterinarian...there's always something new, or unexperienced that'll pop up.  This is one.

 

[xxcc]

Same to me...never seen a cow die from choking on a placenta...maybe you should ask your cows to take smaller bites.

On a similar note, has anyone ever seen a dead cat in a tree?

 

[chambero]

Same category as one getting struck by lightning.  Quit looking for stuff to worry about.

 

[kanshow]

We've had it happen before too.  We can't watch them all and the ones on pasture do what they will.  However if I see it in the pens, I get rid of it before the cow can get to it.  That is also partially for my own benefit as my gag reflex is triggered by the sound of it! blech.

 

[Charo]

We saved a cow some years ago, she fell on the ground choking and was moving her head right-left rapidly, we grab the placenta on the fly and pull it out.

 

[Jess]

We've never had one choke on it, but I've always made it a point to remove it. There's only a small chance that they choke however in the big picture, its a pretty controllable factor in my opinion.

 

[woodyc]

when i was younger i worked in a Charolais herd in south Scotland and they always took away the placenta (afterbirth over here) as they lost a cow with it at that time they put it in in a bag and left it for the garbage lorry to take away one day the guys came lift the garbage and the bag burst covering the man in a really smelly placenta and a letter was sent to the farm telling them never to leave it out for the garbage again on pain of a fine  (lol) 25 years later i dont think i have taken placenta away from a cow and never had a problem   

 

[RyanChandler]

Seems to me there's prolly a pretty good reason why it's instinctual for a momma cow to eat her afterbirth.

 

[WinterSpringsFarm]

I always thought they ate the afterbirth to help not attract predators to the area. It's something that we haven't bred out of the domestic cow. We find it strange since we protect them from predators but it might be different for those who calve out thousands on rangeland?

 

[Lucky_P]

We calve on pasture, so I'm not always there to see it, but I don't actively pursue them to take it away.
Some eat it, some don't.  If they don't... or if I happen to be there and it's already been passed and just lying there,  I'll scoop it up and take it away... just one less enticement to the buzzards.
Additionally, since we've had a couple of cows abort due to Neospora, I don't leave placenta or dead fetuses lying around out there to be consumed by the local coyotes or neighborhood dogs - including our own - who could potentially spread it around some more.