need advice pretty fast-please.

AR Transplant · #1 02/27/08, 09:12 PM

Heres the deal,
have 22 month old angus/cross calf, didn't know she was pregnant.
didn't come to eat last night, nor all day today.
when dh came home we hunted the woods for her, found her obviously in labor,in the back woods, no chance of moving her.

We found her at 6:30, been watching her, she gets up and down some signs of straining, and perhaps a few drops of fluid, mixed with blood.

It is now 9:00 and so far no change. Any advice? Our vet has switched to small animals, he no longer has any equipment for cows.

thanks,

agmantoo · #2 02/27/08, 09:19 PM

What is the angus/cross bred to? Are there any feet showing, if so can you tell if they are front or rear feet? Read this
http://www.2farm.co.nz/animal-birth.html

AR Transplant · #3 02/27/08, 09:32 PM

she is bred to a limousine/angus cross and she is the bull's( that bred her) half sister, and there is no feet or anything showing what so ever. It looks like a very early stage labor with the exception that I asume she has been in labor a long time. The other cows have theirs in half a day. She has not come for food for a day and a half.

I will look at that site you posted right now.

thanks,

sammyd · #4 02/27/08, 09:54 PM

If there's no feet she's either not too far along or there is a problem.
Any way you could get her tied to a tree or something so you could feel around if nothing happens in a few hours?

AR Transplant · #5 02/28/08, 08:11 AM

Well I feel stupid.

Cow was not pregnant.

Cow had bloat.

A very kind vet explained what to do.

So, we rolled her, lifted her, and did all we could do to get her on her feet.

Vet said to poke a knife in her, but this was almost always ending in death. We decided that we would not stick a knife in her because it would just cause more pain from two stupid caregivers.

She died early this morning.

I am going to bed, and thinking seriously about selling out and moving to town.

LittleRedHen · #6 02/28/08, 08:27 AM

Aww I am sorry you had a bad day!

But don't move to town :P You will learn from this and next time you will do better. I lost a goat and her kid when she had a bad birthing experience and I was very angry at myself. Not only angry but also on lack of sleep. I did give up on goats though LOL but I decided to go back to smaller animals until I got a better hang of animal husbandry. I did chickens, ducks, rabbits and turkeys. Then when I felt more confident in my abilities, I got into hogs. I have done great with hogs. So now I am diving into cows and it certainly is a new ballfield. It is intimidating lol. And I sorta feel like I did about the goats. It makes me wish I had a neighbor who could come over and help me and mentor me. But it does make me more thankful for homesteading Today and the ability to come on here and get help. Life experiences sure are hard teachers sometimes but anyways, I am sorry for your loss.

Amanda

genebo · #7 02/28/08, 08:47 AM

This has been a bad winter for bloat. Hay shortages are causing people to feed hay that would normally be discarded. Cows are foraging for plants they wouldn't normally eat.

It's a good idea to put out bloat blocks. They are mineral blocks with proxolene added to prevent bloat. It's also a good idea to keep a couple of bottles of Therabloat on hand. You can get it at Valley Vet among other places. You mix 2 ounces with a pint of water in a long necked bottle, like a wine bottle. Put the bottle in her mouth and tip it up so she drinks it. She'll start burping up the gas almost immediately.

It needs to be done quickly, though. Once a cow has been down for two days, it's really hard for her to recover.

A friend of mine has lost 3 cows to bloat this winter, all due to poor hay. We saved one with the Therabloat. It was too late for the other 3.

Don't be hard on yourself. Even the vet can't save them all. What you had happen is rare.

Genebo
Paradise Farm

ksfarmer · #8 02/28/08, 12:46 PM

Did the vet see the cow? From your description, I'm not sure about bloat. However, without seeing the cow , I can't say for sure either. Losing one is never pleasant , but it happens. Don't let it run you off.

poorboy · #9 02/28/08, 03:14 PM

Wuz working for a fella years ago who was trying to build a top notch Angus herd. He had a bull that he had paid 7000$ fer a 1/3 interest in .
The bull got into some fresh wet alfalfa pasture and bloated badly. We got this bull inna headchute and put a piece of galvanized pipe in his mouth and partways down his throat, next we took a piece of rubber garden hose and slid it inside the galvanized pipe and down into his stomach a listening to it as we went till we got it in the right area..Boss says blow on this hose, I sez you go to "hell" ain't my 7000$, so he blows on it and this humongus mess of gas comes out faster'n fast, boss almost keels over, never laughed so hard in alla my life. But that anna drenching and that ole bull was just fine..An while I'm a thinking bout that old prize bull( he was truly old) we hadda give him cortizone shots when we wanted him to service a cow or some heifers as his "Arther" was so bad he couldn't do the job without the shots..:-)

HomersGoatLady · #10 02/28/08, 08:09 PM

I just had a calf with bloat last week. Did just like Poorboy said...galvanized pipe to hold the mouth open and a few feet of garden hose...feed it in until it hits the stomach and phewww!!! It deflates the poor fella right away. We had to deflate our guy many times over a period of 2 days. Laxatives also help to get things moving through the system. A pint of castor oil helped our little guy move that grain overload through his system. I've done the same thing with goats too, just used a smaller tube.

homersgoatlady

AR Transplant · #11 02/28/08, 10:37 PM

Wow, the pipe thing is amazing. I truly wish I had known that last night, we would have certainly tried that, there was no way we were going to stick a knife in it's side. Now if we had known what we were doing that would have been different.

Guess we can call this a very expensive lesson.

And, we are going to buy some different hay.

thank you for all of your kind replys.

ar

Madsaw · #12 02/28/08, 11:10 PM

Just a couple of questions for you. Where are you located? For the most part a cow getting up and down straining is a sign of stomach problems. Somethign simple as indigeston to a twisted stomach. If she was gone for sometime before finding her I beleive the bloat was the last staage of the problem. Normally a cow that is bloated will be dead in a short time if not treated.
Some of the main causes I have seen are turning them in to hay fields and getting green bloat. Or turning them into hay feilds with frost on them or dew. Then there is the nasty fermenting feed bloat. Took 4 trips from the vets in 4 days to figure out we was trying to make a home brew in our cows guts Lesson there never mix green corn and barlery and grind it. Then there is bacterias and virus that can cause it too. Also there is palntes that cause it too.
You can buy stainless steel tubes in the vet catalogs for inserting in the cows mouth to give pills or to guard a tube down the throat to releive bloat too. I rule of thumb for sticking the cow is about 3 fingers back from teh last short rib on the right side of the cow looking at here. I have never had to go this far to releive them. The vets have doen it for us before though.
Later
Bob

AR Transplant · #13 02/29/08, 10:42 AM

We live in the rural Fort Smith Arkansas area.

A lot is new to our pasture. The guy who owns most of the land has begun to run horses ( 5) on the once only cow pasture.

Then we had a septic tank with a leach field in the pasture "overfill".We noticed the field smelling badly. We had the septic tank pumped that morning. The fact that we had it pumped that morning most likely had nothing to do with her bloating that day because that was the day she had gone missing all day. But there could have been harmful bacteria on the ground from the previous leaching. The septic guy assures me that the pipes will clear out and run clearly as they are supposed to do. We will be diligent to put yeast down the drain every month and cut back the bleach that I use in laundry.

We fed the same hay, only we started using the hay in the loft as we ran out of the stuff we had stored in the bottom of the barn. ( not our barn, but they let us store our hay there.)

That is all that is different.

Thanks for the bloat advice, I pray that I never need it, but I am keeping a close watch on the cows and will be getting different hay tomorrow.

ar

Madsaw · #14 02/29/08, 10:54 AM

I know most of your plants are dead there right now too. But do a search for poisonious plantes in your area. Check out Black Nightshade. Its a common killer to cattle when feed gets short and they eat it.
I am thinking it was something in the pasture and not the hay. If it was the hay the other cattle would be sick too. Also was there any discharge from the nose or mouth. Would have there been a chance of her getting into to much corn or protein supplment?
Our grey water for yrs ran out in the pasture. The cows drank it every day for some odd reason. I am thinking your heifer go into somethign about 3 to 4 days before she was noticed missing.
Bob

Brisket · #15 02/29/08, 12:26 PM

lost my first cow two months after she gave birth, she had a worm, could have all been advoided by one eight way shoot. about .50 cents. We all learn and we go forward. It is a great thing to see when the cows come in when you call them and can lead them around, clean around them and to give them water. I wouldnt trade it for anything. they do sell good (bloat knives). ask a good rancher were to stick a cow if it has bloat If its been down for a long time it may be the only way to save it. I have only heard if you stick a cow and it has the bloat you dont have to worry about it running on you. Please ask a ton of stuff on this site it is a good site. I go to my neighbor who has been raising cows for fifty years but we will be moving so I am going to this site more and more.

AR Transplant · #16 02/29/08, 01:21 PM

Thanks brisket, I envy you with your neighbor, he is worth his weight in jerseys, angus, and every other kind of cattle around.

ar

65284 · #17 02/29/08, 09:00 PM

You don't have to stick them with a knife, in fact it's a bad idea, unless you really gash them, the wound will most often seal over fairly quickly and they will rebloat. Much better to buy the largest syringe and needle you can find, remove the plunger and stick in the proper place. About a hand span in front of the hip bone and the same space down from the spine. Once the bloat goes down I remove the syringe and leave the needle taped in place, don't block the hole, for a while so the gas can escape. Any sort of sticking is much less painful for the animal than the bloating.