If it was me I would wait and see, she may just shell it out like a pea if you take care not to over feed her, however i still think she needs some hard feed even if its just a molasses mineral bucket other wise she is going to be pulling all the nutrition from her own growth.
As long as its not a breach if she can't calve on her own you should still have plenty of time to call the vet if you keep a close eye on her.
BTW as long as we can feel 2 testicles in the other side of the rubber ring we always do them this way and have never missed one, if we can only get one we abort the mission and get the vet to do it later.
much less traumatic for the calves, they never seem to bother, not like continentals who really seem to suffer when you put a ring on them.
unfortunately there is no right or wrong answer to have her abort it or not.
I would probably ask a vet his/her opinion. At the end of the day you can not predict what is going to happen, dexters have a habit of surprising you. Your little heifer might calve just fine without any problems.
Personally i would not have her injected to abort because as it was said before it can cause problems with getting incalf again at a later date.
I would probably let her carry the calve and keep a very close eye on her making sure she has lots of TLC and possiblylet her have a mineral lick for incalf cattle, mole valley do a Calsea Calver block which my cattle love.
Good Luck and I am sure we all would like to know the out come, hope all goes well
Yes, I'm going to let her run on and she may well calve it herself although she is quite small.
I suppose the cost of a CS will depend on whether it's nightshift or weekend etc. I was told around £200 but don't know whether that includes all the drugs as well etc.
Martin, we have an 8yo, 97cm non-short, had her first calf as a 2yo by cs, with her original owner.
We called our vet for her second calf, he chose not to cs, opted for a hard pull, soft tissue obstruction only.
She was up and about feeding her calf in seconds when the calf was finally delivered, and she passed the placenta naturally without injections or pessaries.
All she had was an antibiotic to guard against infection. Her 3rd and subsequent calves have all been fast easy unassisted deliveries.
I agree that there are some cases where culling would be advisable. We have culled such a one.
They CS a lot of Blues every year they calve don't they? All that for a huge bum!
Calf size if funny. Using one bull, I have cows that will produce big calves and ones that produce small. Even with using my AA bull, the biggest/problem calf was to one of the biggest cows. The smaller cows that I put him to (not really small) and that I was more worried about, just calved (so far, still got 20 to go). I have noticed that my best calvers are the slightly dairy type Dexters who just seem to have a lot of room. Like this one, she will just calve by herself almost guaranteed:
I live about a mile from my farm and work full time, so anything that maybe a problem now or in the future has to go! I let my head rule my heart now and am very strict on what stays and what goes, with the limited number of animals I am able to keep it just makes sense in my situation.
I have two grandchildren who are spending more time on farm with me so I am especially wary of temprement as well.
With cull prices as they are at the moment it would make sense for any cattle keeper to take a good hard look at what they have and cash anything that is below the standard they wish to achieve.
I've got a 4.5 month old heifer in my main herd with two 5 month old bull calves. She and her mum are being moved to a female only field on Saturday. Hope this is in good time to avoid these problems.
4 years ago i had a heifer which was 13 month on the first calf. She calfed without a problem because we prepered her with homoeopatic. But the age should be not common.....
Colin wrote:I've got a 4.5 month old heifer in my main herd with two 5 month old bull calves. She and her mum are being moved to a female only field on Saturday. Hope this is in good time to avoid these problems.
Regards,
Colin
The youngest heifer to get pregnant I have heard of is 11 weeks. We separate at 4 months. As there are two young bulls then there's more chance I suppose. I don't know what to advise as it's outside my experience except I would be concerned enough to keep a close eye on them and get more advise hopefully from someone on here.
evolen wrote:4 years ago i had a heifer which was 13 month on the first calf. She calfed without a problem because we prepered her with homoeopatic. But the age should be not common.....
So evolen's heifer got pregnant at around 4 months Colin.
I wonder what it depends on.
i am terrible at this sort of management thing. my calves run with each other until the bulls are cut at nearly 12 months old. my bull has been with my cows and calves right through, as always. i have never had a served heifer calf.
i am sure you will all say i am lucky, but am i lucky in the genetics of my beasts, that maybe delays the onset of sexual maturity?
dom
Colin wrote:Blimey, I'd better get a move on tomorrow morning.
You'd think evolution would offer a bit more protection by inhibiting fertility at such a young age.
Regards,
Colin
My vet, a slight woman, couldn't PD one of the heifers at 10 months because she was so small inside. But there are pregnancy tests available, your vet will know. I get the impression this is fairly rare, not sure? I spoke to someone not long ago, and I think it might have been Beryl, but whoever it was had a substantial herd and they kept them together and entire until weaning at 7 months, then they were cut and after decades they had never had a problem. But I don't think the bull wasn't in with them at that age.
