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Have any of you ever.....?

the_jersey_lilly_2000

Well-known member
Seen anything like this?

This calf was born today. At first I thought it was just a foot turned under...that might possibly straiten out with time, and maybe a little intervention. But.....it's not. It's actually broken....compound fracture with the bone stickin out. But....it's not a fresh break, the leg is stiff and you can't move it. The skin is all healed up around the bone, and what is stickin out isn't much bigger than, oh maybe like half a marble. And it's relatively smooth. There's no swellin whatsoever, no blood....

So my question is...how would a calfs leg get broke before birth?

Here's pics...
2009-05-03-029.jpg


2009-05-03-030.jpg


2009-05-03-031.jpg


Makes me sick....other than the foot/leg...she's a perfectly nice heifer calf. :roll: We've had problems the last couple days with a pack of dogs. So to prevent mama from havin to protect her calf from the dog pack or coyotes, and gettin torn up in the process....we decided to go ahead and put the calf down. Hate that part of this job...

Few more pictures from our afternoon around the pasture...remember the flood waters??? Here's what it did to one of our brand new fences.....looks like fun work :wink:
2009-05-03-002.jpg


2009-05-03-003-1.jpg


This is what it now looks like after I disked and all the rain.....grass is growin good.
2009-05-03-001.jpg


And the tanks are full..... so it's not all bad:D
2009-05-03-006.jpg
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
So my question is...how would a calfs leg get broke before birth?

My guess is she got bunted-kicked- fell into/onto something--when the fetus was quite young...
 

Jassy

Well-known member
Sorry about the calf...weird things happen in mother nature sometimes...Our meadows are almost as green as your pastures..they look so good. You have floods that mess up your fences..we get snowdrifts that are hard on ours...Have fun cleaning that up!!!








































 

Faster horses

Well-known member
That is gross, JL. I'm glad you did the responsible thing and put her down. That's the best thing you could have done under the circumstances.
 

Mike

Well-known member
I don't see a way any calf could break it's leg in utero. Only in the last few weeks of pregnancy do an unborn calf's bones become hard and brittle enough to break. And the bones are very pliable & flexible when in the first few months.

I would tend to think it's some sort of congenital defect over and above a bone fracture. Just my 2 cents, but weird things happen.
 

Grassfarmer

Well-known member
Mike said:
I don't see a way any calf could break it's leg in utero. Only in the last few weeks of pregnancy do an unborn calf's bones become hard and brittle enough to break. And the bones are very pliable & flexible when in the first few months.

I would tend to think it's some sort of congenital defect over and above a bone fracture. Just my 2 cents, but weird things happen.
:agree: Apart from anything else the calf if floating in fluid when it's still in the cow and would move away from any impact to the cow rather than break a bone.
 

randiliana

Well-known member
We had one similar to that about 10 years ago. It had been broken a couple inches or so below the hock, and had healed with the hoof right up by the hock. Would have left him, but there was a hole through the skin. Took him to the vet, and had it amputated. He did pretty good, mama came back to him all summer, and he was able to move around a small pasture. We butchered him at about 800 lbs.

Vet said that she had been hit, or had fallen and he had broken the leg in utero. Freak kind of thing.
 

Just Ranchin

Well-known member
typically a calf that knuckles is caused by a selenium deficiency in utero, but this is weird. If I had to hazard a guess, either a mineral issue, or possibly genetic defect? Nice to see grass again!
 

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