Blue Eyes

[ezeranch]

I had a heifer calf born yesterday morning. Her mom is a first time calver and she is a brangus. She is crossed with a brahman. The calf is brown with blue eyes. She is also pigeon-toed. I have never had a calf with blue eyes. Can they have blue eyes or does this mean she is blind?

 

[kolanuraven]

Have you checked her occular reflexes? Try that and see how she reacts.

We had one or 2 blue eyed brangus, if I remember correctly they were also brindle in hide color but their eye site was fine!

 

[IL Rancher]

I have seen several blue eyed calves... They all could see, don't know if they suffered any vision problems but they saw good enough to not run into fences, keep up wth mom, eat, and all that.. Not like a blind animal that you can just tell can't see squat.

 

[ezeranch]

We have never had a blind calf so I didn't know if it would be obvious to me if she was blind or not.

 

[kolanuraven]

If you waved your hand right in front of her eye you could tell if she reacted to it or not, just like you would if something was coming @ your eye.

I doubt she's blind. People seem to equate blue eyes with blindness 100% of the time....yeah it could be an indicator but it's NOT a sure bet!

Never know till you try!

 

[ezeranch]

I went and checked and she's not blind. Thanks everyone!

 

[T99]

How about when there's a blue spot in a brown eye? I bought some black and baldy bred heifers and didn't notice til we got home that one has a blue spot in her eye. Her eyesight seems to be ok but is there something I need to watch for down the road?

 

[IL Rancher]

A blue spot is probably a scar. WE see that a lot in this area from calves or cows that got pinkeye.. Bad cases will scar the whole eye, real bad cases will blow out the eye but a lot just end up with a small blue dot somewhere on the eye.

 

[Soapweed]

Give her a shot of Vitamin A and see if that helps.