Post by may1802 on Nov 12, 2018 20:44:58 GMT -5
Hello all, I have a bit of an unusual situation that I wanted to run by you all.
We have a jersey cow, who is heavily pregnant with her second calf, although we don't have a due date, and we're starting to wonder if we somehow missed her calving... We've been keeping dairy cows for almost 6 years now and have never had anything like this happen, so we're a little stumped.
Late last week she was starting to look very loose in her back end, she had LOTS of goo (sometimes finger-thick), she had gone slab-sided, her bag was filling but not strutting, pins were starting to get soft but not gone, and she was carrying her tail higher than usual (but not sticking out like active labor); so we brought her in from the pasture to keep a closer eye on her. We never saw any signs of active labor, never saw her pins "go", etc. A day or so later, she is still looking slab-sided, her bag is continuing to fill, but her back end doesn't look loose anymore, and her pins are completely normal. I have never seen a cow back-track before.
Today I started to wonder if there was a chance that she had somehow had the calf last weekend and we somehow missed it.
I know that sounds strange, but there were a couple of other things that made me a bit paranoid.
1)Earlier this summer, one of our cows calved and the (less than 24 hour old) heifer calf got out of our pasture (5 strand high tensile electric fence) and got lost, we never were able to find her. So in the back of my mind, I can't help but wonder if that happened again, even though it had only happened once in the last ~6 years.
2)I also thought that if she had calved and somehow the calf had wandered off that surely she would be calling for it, but another of our cows calved during that time and she is totally taken with the other cow's calf. Keeps trying to get him to nurse, Momma mooing to him, sticking very close by him, etc. I know that this could just be pregnancy hormones, but I also wondered if she is looking at him as a "substitute" calf?
If she has calved, and we somehow lost the calf, we should be milking her out, but if she hasn't calved then we don't want to take the baby's colostrum...
So, have you all ever experienced anything like this before? What would you recommend that we do going forward?
Thanks in advance for your advice!!
We have a jersey cow, who is heavily pregnant with her second calf, although we don't have a due date, and we're starting to wonder if we somehow missed her calving... We've been keeping dairy cows for almost 6 years now and have never had anything like this happen, so we're a little stumped.
Late last week she was starting to look very loose in her back end, she had LOTS of goo (sometimes finger-thick), she had gone slab-sided, her bag was filling but not strutting, pins were starting to get soft but not gone, and she was carrying her tail higher than usual (but not sticking out like active labor); so we brought her in from the pasture to keep a closer eye on her. We never saw any signs of active labor, never saw her pins "go", etc. A day or so later, she is still looking slab-sided, her bag is continuing to fill, but her back end doesn't look loose anymore, and her pins are completely normal. I have never seen a cow back-track before.
Today I started to wonder if there was a chance that she had somehow had the calf last weekend and we somehow missed it.
I know that sounds strange, but there were a couple of other things that made me a bit paranoid.
1)Earlier this summer, one of our cows calved and the (less than 24 hour old) heifer calf got out of our pasture (5 strand high tensile electric fence) and got lost, we never were able to find her. So in the back of my mind, I can't help but wonder if that happened again, even though it had only happened once in the last ~6 years.
2)I also thought that if she had calved and somehow the calf had wandered off that surely she would be calling for it, but another of our cows calved during that time and she is totally taken with the other cow's calf. Keeps trying to get him to nurse, Momma mooing to him, sticking very close by him, etc. I know that this could just be pregnancy hormones, but I also wondered if she is looking at him as a "substitute" calf?
If she has calved, and we somehow lost the calf, we should be milking her out, but if she hasn't calved then we don't want to take the baby's colostrum...
So, have you all ever experienced anything like this before? What would you recommend that we do going forward?
Thanks in advance for your advice!!