Reminder to Avoid Pi** Poor Management During Calving

[chambero]

I think this is Jen's term, but it applies to me  because I screwed up.

We pulled a Heatwave calf a week ago last Thursday out of one of our very best calves.  We didn't find her very quickly (she had probably been trying to have the baby for 24 hours).  Calf was dead, but mom seemed to be ok.  She didn't have any tearing and shed her afterbirth within just a few minutes.  We got stuck in the mud a little while later hauling the calf off.  So, by the end of the day we were tired, my arm hurt, cow looked fine, so we turned her out without any further attention.

She wasn't ok.  Father-in-law noticed her standing off by herself Friday, but she came in to eat.  I was out of town on business till yesterday.  I went out to check on things and found her down.  She had gotten an infection inside of her.  Went back home and got medicine.  She had gotten up in the meantime, but when tried to get her to the pens she waded out into the tank to get away from us.  We called some guys with horses to come rope her late yesterday and they couldn't get to her till today.  Turns out today was too late.

All could have been avoided if I had took her to town to watch her for a couple of weeks.  Expensive reminder not to take things for granted or the easy way out.  I hope our loss reminds someone else to to be extra careful with one that's had trouble "just in case". 

 

[DiamondS]

Chambero, don't beat yourself up too badly.  We all make mistakes.  A year ago, I had an older cow that didn't seem right to me.  Bagged up, coming up to eat, but looked a little in discomfort.  I kept an eye on her but after 2 days of her just not looking quite right, I drove her to the pens and sure enough, she had a head out of the cervix, but that was all.  Mind you, I was calving 400 hd of cows at the time.  I took her to a local college vet hospital for a c-section.  She had started to calve, but things weren't right and she quit with only the head through the cervix and everything was closing down on the calf.  She showed no signs of labor, etc.  Well, it wasn't a very good c-section and I had them put the cow down there at the college.  I took that one pretty hard.  I kept thinking that I should have seen something....  We have to learn our lessons and move on.  Hindsight can really get ya.  Best of luck to you on the rest of your calving season. 

 

[chambero]

We've got about 250 hd calving right now so normally any one doesn't get a lot of attention.  I'm kicking myself on this one because we already had gotten her up for the pull and could have moved her to where we could watch her easily afterwards.