Lost a calf

Oregon Julie · #1 06/14/07, 09:51 AM

Our half Brown Swiss/half Jersey cow calved last Friday. She had a beautiful Hereford X heifer, strong, active and wonderful in every way. As of yesterday (Wednesday) mid morning this calf was active, actually saw her running around in the corral with her tail up over her back having a great time on Tuesday PM.

Anyway when we got home from work around 5:15 she was laying in the corral flat. My husband did not think much of it, just that she was sort of sun bathing as it was a nice warm (but not hot) day. When I got back from grocery shopping we went out to bottle her "siblings" (Jersey drop calves). She was still laying this way. He went in and got her up, she got up with no problem and stretched. At this point I was unaware of the fact that she had been down in that same spot when he got home earlier.

Within a few hours she was flat and unable to rise. Her head had the tendency to pull towards her spine. We moved her on to a bed of straw and I took her temp, 103. Not ideal, but certainly not really high and since we don't know how long she had being laying in the sun hard to say why it was there.

I called a friend with my calf experience then I have who suggested that it might be white muscle, so we gave her a BoSe shot. We also gave her Pen and some fluids on the theory that she was most likely at least a bit dehydrated or soon would be.

There was no change in her up until about 1AM when I went to bed and she was dead this AM when my husband went out to check her around 6. So my question to all of you is what was this to a 6 day old calf? I am at a complete loss as to what could make a calf go from ok in the AM (and ---- good the previous day) to dead 12 or so hours later. BTW no scours, no her navel was not wet or icky in anyway. No swelling, no indication of any injury, she is absolutely perfect, just dead.

In a perfect world we would have a necropsy done, but this is not in the cards as we are short on cash as we are about to move. I hope someone has a good theory as to what happened because this is frustrating and depressing.

SHELBY · #2 06/14/07, 10:03 AM

I have heard that white muscle will heighten with alot af exercise or activity.

Being that the calf was fine and went down after the running around would make me think she had white muscle

Oregon Julie · #3 06/14/07, 01:46 PM

Thanks for the response Shelby. After I posted this I spoke with a friend who works for a guy who ran a dairy. He also thought white muscle and said it always seemed to hit the biggest, healthest of the bunch that got hit. We are in a deficient area, so this makes me think I better give BoSe to everyone shortly after birth, just to be on the safe side. Guess we need to breed her back to a Hereford and hope for another one as good as this little girl was:-(

Up North · #4 06/14/07, 01:58 PM

Sorry for the loss. Always hard to lose a good one. Would it perhaps soften the economic loss if you could graft them drop calves onto the fresh cow...
Are you absolutely sure the calf nursed Colostrum in the first 6-10 hours of it's life?

If you will be giving BO-SE shots to every calf, would it perhaps be equally or more effective to give the Cow the shot a week before calving

Just some food for thought.
Good Luck with the moving. We, too are moving this week-870 miles- just taking a coffee break to retain what little sanity remains in my cranium, LOL.