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The most unusual event on your farm/Ranch ?

H

HAY MAKER

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Feb 13, 2005
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Texas
I was reading Katrina's post about bad luck with a calf,reminded me of the time I had a good cow have twins,that in it self is unusal around here but she had twin bull calfs,I keep away from my calfs for the first 2 days give em time to adjust and mother up,unless there is a problem.
A few days went by and it was obvious there were problems,looking closer I could see the calves were lathorgic and gaunt but still nursing,closer inspection revealved they were both born blue eyed,almost white,long story,short they didnt make it,always wondered ,what caused those calves to be born blind,she had calved before with no problems,cant say if she ever had more blind calves,took her for a ride,I wonder how common it is to have twin calves both born blind ?......................good luck
 
Interesting, Haymaker.

Lack of Vitamin A can cause calves to be born blind. I don't know if
you have that problem in Texas, but it used to be a problem here in
Montana.

We had a cow who calved and in a few days, her calf died. So we grafted
a calf on the cow and in a few days it died. She wanted a calf real bad,
so we tried once more, only to have that calf die as well. When we talked to the vet, he said something was wrong with her milk, most likely.

Pretty dumb, huh? Lost 3 calves before we wised up. :mad:
 
I've heard its fairly common when both twins are bulls...dont know how true that is, but I've heard that all my life. I'd just soon NOT have twins.

As for the most unusual thing.....

I have a Brangus Bull, You've prolly all seen pictures of me scratchin his ear....He's a big ole baby, I raised from a 2 mo old calf (but I still dont trust him cuz he's a bull) Anyway, we'd had a couple neighbor bulls visit our pasture and kept callin the owners to come git em. Went out on our daily check one evenin, and found my Bull down. Front left leg swollen huge up above the knee towards the shoulder. Horseshoer was here and I'd taken him out there with me to see the cows. We got outta the truck, he stood beside the truck, thinkin to himself, "she's nuts!!!" I"m sure. Cuz I walked up to him and made him get up. When he got up is when I seen just how swollen the front leg was. And that he refused to put any weight on it whatsoever.
I've seen bulls go thru the salebarn with broke back legs, but never a front leg. He let me lift his leg (like you would a horse) but still couldnt' put weight on it at all.
The next mornin I got on the phone. Called my vet.....he was on vacation. :roll: So I called the other vets office. They advised me to bring him in. CAn't load a bull with afront broken leg, much less haul him 30 miles. I explained to them that all I wanted was for them to come out and look at it and tell me what would be best.....put him down?? or what?? They refused to even come out and look. This got me a lil hot under the collar. Couldnt have him processed, because the leg had fever in it. (Don't know if I coulda done that anyway......by this time I"m bawlin) That afternoon we went out and found where he was holed up, it was maybe 300 yards from the corrals, but down in a creek. Took us about 3 hours to slowly coax him to hobble to the corrals. Got him in there, and I called the vet again. Since we had him in the Corrals I figured they'd come out. NOPE no dice. Guess they didnt want my money. So I ordered some big bolus asprin, for the swelling and fever, and maybe ease some of the pain. He was still eatin and drinkin fine, so instead of just puttin him down, like everyone we talked to seemed to think we should do, we decided to see if he'd maybe get better. Every mornin and every evenin, I'd take 3 of them asprins and beat them to a powder and put in a bucket of sweet feed for him. One evenin about a month later I went out to give him his daily dose, and low n behold he'd tried to jump the 16 ft galvenized gate, tore it to smitherines, and was no where to be seen. Rode the pastures and found him hobblin along, but with the girls. He was happy LOL So I said, if he can jump the gate, I think he must be feelin better. Everyone was already bred, so there wasn't any breedin for him to do until the next spring. He limped for a long time, but when breedin time rolled around he was doin just fine. He's a lil knock kneed on that one side, but he's still workin.
 
Faster horses said:
Interesting, Haymaker.

Lack of Vitamin A can cause calves to be born blind. I don't know if
you have that problem in Texas, but it used to be a problem here in
Montana.

We had a cow who calved and in a few days, her calf died. So we grafted
a calf on the cow and in a few days it died. She wanted a calf real bad,
so we tried once more, only to have that calf die as well. When we talked to the vet, he said something was wrong with her milk, most likely.

Pretty dumb, huh? Lost 3 calves before we wised up. :mad:
Click to expand...

Now that is unusual ,what become of the cow that posioned calfs,be hard to make money with her...............good luck
 
Guess the strangest thing I ever saw happen, was when I was a kid.

My mom had an old brindle milk cow (she called her Betsy) who calved just as regular as you please, and they were always big calves. Every spring, a new baby. One year, though, she came in with a tiny little bull calf.......mom never thought anything about it, and shut them in the corral......this was on my dad's birthday.

Betsy wasn't happy at all, about being shut up, and as soon as mom let her out, she hightailed it down the creek, and three days after she brought in the bull calf, she brought in a heifer calf.......on my grandma's birthday. I still have no idea how that calf survived.

From that time on, those calves were Harold and Emma, after dad and grandma. I'm not too sure they were as thrilled with the names us kids gave them, as we were, though.

Three or four years later, Betsy did it again........twin bulls, but born in the field at the house, so both were together.........

She's the only cow we ever had, that had twins, and the only cow I ever heard of, that had twins twice.
 
I am not sure if this is strange, but quite amazing....we had a 12 year old cow give us a set of twins at the beginning of March, raised two nice heifers, which turned into great cows...but the amazing part of this story was that at the end of February, (less than a year later) she had a set of triplets!!!! All survived, a set of identical bulls and a heifer. But we took it easy on the 13 year old cow and she only raised one.
The following year it was a little dissappointing when she only had one :wink: !!

Great cow, we finally sold her when she was 17 after we had either sold or retained all of her 19 calves!

So who need embryo flushes when you have a cow like this!!!
 
We had two mares that were in foal,one night both mares foaled.One had a set of twins,the other one had a purdy stud colt! I know this isn't strange BUT what was strange,we had our other horses running with our cattle,and gregs fav.filly was Pe-od she didn't have a colt so she adopted a calf,wouldn't let the cow near the calf.Totally acted like she was the calves mommy,we had a heck of a time even once we separated the horses from the cows,this filly would stand at the fence crying for this calf...
 
I had a cow that had twins in 2 consecutive years. The first set was 2 heifer calves that she raised without any trouble at all. The next year she had one calf and it was two days later before she had the second calf. Problem was that she then refused to claim the first calf. I had by the way already seen this calf nursing. Upon trying to get her up to make her reclaim the first calf, she took off running down a hill and ruptured her udder (first time I had ever seen that). Wound up losing both calves.
 
I had a cow have a calf one year and about the time we weaned her calf, her yearling daughter had a calf! The gramma to that calf went and took it away from the daughter and raised it and about the time we weaned it off she had another one. So she raised 3 calves without ever drying up. All good calves and she bred back. Maybe she was part pig as I hear that a sow can almost have 3 litters a year. :wink:
 
We had a cow that her first year as a hiefer she had twins, the next year she had triplets, next year she had twins again. She died when she was only five years old with a heart attack while we were sorting on a hot day. She had jsut as many calves in her short life as most cows do in a life time.
 
On March 16, we had a 16 month old heifer die, trying to have a Hereford calf........

We turned her out, to wean her, and she got bred by a bull that got in the pasture. We didn't even know she was gonna calve until about Jan, when she started bagging up.

I tried to pull the calf, to save her, but couldn't (calf was coming head first, front legs were tucked underneath). So I tried to do a C-section and save the calf, but that didn't work either. The calf died before I could get the incision finished.

Lost them both. They are buried not far from the house.

That was one big calf, though.........perfect Hereford markings on it's head. I have no idea if it was a bull or heifer.

A link to the pic, if you want to see it:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/Ranchy/Mar16551.jpg
 
I had a lightning strike kill 14 cows and my FAVORITE horse all in one hit!

Horse was in the barn and cows were not under any trees. Bolt hit a HUGE whitepine that was several hundred yards away and the juice ran the roots. It shattered gate posts made from power poles, vaporized barbed wire and melted gate locks. Fried every critter with about 300 yards....we even had squirrel nests that had been knocked out and the squirrels were fried!!!!

The Geology/Science dept of UGA came up to see it....no one had ever seen such a thing!!!

We had several BIG strikes all that summer...no one could figure out what was going on...not even the USGS...everyone was confused about it. It got so bad that my neighbor with a back hoe didn't even wait for me to call him after a storm...he'd just crank up and come on as he'd have something to bury for sure.

I sold that place and MOVED. Last I heard they are still having trouble with it hitting the houses now on the place. Has to be something in the ground...some type of element or mineral.....but no one could work it out.
 
That would take the prize for unusal, Kolanraven. What a deal to get into.

South of us 30 or so miles, lightening strikes a lot and they have alot of fires in the dry season. The joke is that someone buried a lot of money there and it draws lightening.

Maybe you should go back to your old digs and look for the money! :wink:

Of course, I wouldn't either after losing as many critters as you did.
 
No such luck FH as my Grandfather bought the place in the ' 20's and Grandmother made sure there was not a dime left when he died!!! I was the 3rd generation on the place.

When I bought this farm , it was from an old bachelor man. He was an odd duck for sure and the rumor was that he buried all his $$$$ in the well house.

It was a tradition it seemd as his grandfather had died and the family had dug up X amount of $$$. Then his father had died and they dug up X amount of $$$.

So when he died his nephew told me that the ond man had left only had $2 in the bank...so the rest must be buried right??? So off we go to the pump house all excited and with a shovel. Throw open the door and it's a concrete floor with rebar!!!


So now each and every time we're digging on the place and hear a " clink"...we say " Ah...there it is". Well it's been almost 20 yrs and not a cent had shown up...just buried junk!
 
We cut a two year old bull one winter and turned him out with the yearling heifers. Danged if he didn't breed two before he ran out of ammo. I'm just guessing that that would be about the furthest thing from my mind were I in his shoes :shock:
 

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