Warning:Graphic Photo attached. Calving trouble

I do not know how that got started that Angus have small calves. It wasn't true 40 years ago and it isn't true today.
Easy calving is something that has to be bred for. Bulls have to be carefully chosen for heifers of any breed.
But all heifers to be kept should have a pelvic exam before breeding! If you have a heifer with a diamond shaped pelvis you can know she will not have a live calf. There are other shapes that will not allow a heifer to calve and there are also owner reasons a heifer can not calve. They all need to be reviewed. Selling a first calf heifer because she could not calve due to no fault of her own is not reasonable.
Put a calf on her.

Maybe things are different on the beef side, but it's not unusual for a dairy heifer to have a stillborn calf, especially if it's a big bull.

Out of curiosity, I Googled and found this study, which involved over 7,000 cows on 3 Colorado dairies.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17369215

Their rate of assisted births is a little higher than what I've experienced on the farms I've worked on, but perhaps those farmers were more aggressive about pulling calves. Otherwise, the statistics were pretty much in line with my personal experience.

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"I love all of this mud," said no one, ever.

An injection of Lute and several terramicyn boluses will cause the heifer to flush the afterbirth.

Young bulls, no matter the breed usually throw larger calves than older mature bulls, more so if the bull in question has any bos indicus blood.

An injection of Lute and several terramicyn boluses will OFTEN cause the heifer to flush the afterbirth. Just not a sure thing. Going in and pulling it out can damage the "buttons" that the placenta is attached to the cow with.

Please guide me to the source for your young bulls throwing larger calves info? I'd like to look into this further.

http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/400/400-803/400-803.html
See table 1. It shows Angus with the lowest birth weights.

http://www.angus.org/Nce/Documents/CedCemEpd.pdf
Refers to the reputation Angus has for low birth weight.

http://www.iqbeef.org/Blog/Hough.pdf
See Figure 1. It shows Angus with lowest birth weights.

Pelvic exams for heifers isn't common. In fact I think it is quite rare. Perhaps it should be done, but management of beef cattle is often behind the times.

My personal experience upon the advice given by my Vet has shown that it works more often than not.
Where in my post did I say that?

Again, based on personal experience from my many years of operating a cow calf operation.

Here is some reading;

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sourc...NVbdYtvgd8v5NQ

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sourc...kWjaCEbCBaG1bg

http://www.ansci.umn.edu/beef/beefupdates/bcmu07.pdf

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/vi...ht%20cattle%22

Sorry if my comments sounded confrontational. They weren’t meant to be.
Lute is a hormone that brings a cow into heat. That causes the cow to open up and allows the placenta to pass. Often times it will. Horses respond most of the time, cows less so. You can also give the cow a shot of oxytosin that will stimulate the cow to expel the placenta. You must do this fairly early on, as the uterus naturally contracts after birth and the cow will have difficulty pushing placenta past a constricted uterus.

My additional comment about buttons was more for additional information and not criticism for anything you said.

I couldn't find anything about younger bulls throwing larger calves, unless you take the thought that with an older bull you have some calving history to go on, while a young bull has no such record.

Interesting that the first web site you listed recommends bulls with a larger pelvic area. Seems that hip lock would be greater with calves that had a larger pelvic area. I can see that you’d want to keep heifers from bulls with large “birthing hips” pelvic area, but for calving ease, I don’t see the advantage. But, what do I know?

Thanks for the additional information from the suggested web sites.

Baxter Black, Veterinarian and cowboy poet, has an interesting poem on one of his CDs about pulling calves. Seems that since most ranchers are experienced in pulling calves, the ones that he gets called to are mostly lost causes. The poem/story is about a veterinary sideline business of calf taxidermy. Also, his charge for a farm visit to pull a calf is $100 and the hide.

My opinion is based on many years of putting yearling bulls on yearling hiefers and the resulting wrecks. After several of these wrecks, I started putting the older bulls with the hiefers if they were big enough to handle the size of the bull. The number of calving problems dropped.

Will do more searching for the bull age/birth size info. and post it here.

My cow's first [bull] calf presented both upside-down and backwards...DOA. She's 3/4ths Guernsey-Angus and was AI'd with Jersey. She's large, about 1400#. At 11:30pm the night before she was just fine when I checked in on her, but when I went to her at 6 a.m. next day, it was too late. There wouldv'e been nothing I could have done for her even if I had been checking her out and found this out any earlier. It was a Sat. morning in mid March. A goodly neighbor did come over and try to pull the calf, to no avail, and he worried that he would tear her badly in the attempt. She wound up falling down with her head downhill. HUGE and frightening struggle getting her back up on her feet. Only one of four vets to whom I could truck her was open on Sat. mornings...thank God! And that was a tough 44 mile trip for this novice milkmaid.

Her second calf was a Saler cross, large, and she needed help. Her third was another Jersey cross and she dropped that one successfully by herself. Her fourth, Jersey again, needed help as he presented with his nose first, and the vet came and made a safe delivery of it. Her fifth was a Guernsey, which was presenting properly, but very large, more than 90#. She was in labor all day long to no avail. The vet finally got here at about 8:30p.m. had the counterforce puller on her and he was coming, but she sat down, and he had to begin again, and this time used just the simple chain...very, very slowly and carefully. Because of the long labor and all, this was a very sleepy calf for quite a while afterwards, but was healthy his entire life, as were all three that we kept. The most docile was, of course, the Guernsey bull...and best meat, too. Now, she's supposed to be calving between now and Jul 10th, and was bred to an Angus, but shows no signs of pregnancy yet. If no calf, she's not getting another chance, because this AI was very good, and all five first 5 of 7 AI's took.

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This story is why I say I would rid my BEEF herd of a cow that I'm constantly having to pamper.