Calving Season from Hail!

So far the is has been a calving season for the records- mostly bad. First one to pop out was a premmie, about two weeks ago. Gave it to the daughter, who had it up on it's feet, nursing and hopping around and happy. About the size of my border collie. She came to dinner for Easter, and got home to find the little guy in bad shape, and he died the next morning. Next calf had a ruptured navel, and died about three hours after he was born. Next one was up and doing fine. Daughter tagged it and gave it it's first shots, the little bugger ran through an electric fence, got hung up, aspirated his "First Defense" bolus, and choked to death. Next one was born fine, but we noticed the next day, she had a bulge out of her navel. Visit from the vet the next day, she tied it off and lanced it, and it now looks pretty good. But the calfs mother went down that evening with 'milk fever' and required another visit from the vet. Total bill for that day was just shy of $200. The other two cows are now foster mothering two holstein calves, and the first with the premmie is keeping the bull company until she goes to the auction in July.

Well Don, I'm glad to see someone has stepped up to adopt my usual calving luck this year. So far I've got 16 calves in 18 days and no deaths yet. I had to have the vet calf-jack one out of a heifer and then sew her uterus back in shortly after, ugh. I had to pull other out of a heifer tonight myself, but that was an easy pull. The calf and heifer were both up right away and he went right to nursing which really took me by surprise. All in all, it's been great year so far here. Makes me dread what I'm going to be in for with the next 16 cows! As they say, it all balances out over time.

donjr
Do you give your cows pre-breeding season vaccinations such as Vision-8 with Spur ??

I sure don't want to jinx it,but so far,I'll just say,could be worse. I culled some problem cows last fall and bred 10 heifers. One of them threw a preemie last month but it was alive. I would have prefered it wasn't. Dispite my best efforts it only lived a day. But since then 3 of the others have calved unassisted and are feeding the calves. The first cow to calve was an old gal with kind of a big bag,but nothing that should have been a big problem,but the calf couldn't find a teat so I mixed up some powdered colostrum and bottle fed it once. It's been OK since. All the rest have been good so far. Had one come up missing this morning. Just born yesterday morning,but wasn't there today. Found it in the fence row way down to the south in another pasture,napping among some big rocks.