Farm Talk Tuesday: Dystocia

I’ll try to keep this simple but please let me know if you have any questions. Dystocia is commonly known as difficult calving. We try to avoid it at all costs. One of the most impactful tools we use are expected progeny differences (EPDs). All registered animals have EPDs that provide information about various predicted genetic traits like birth weight and calving ease, for example. There are a ton of different EPDs available on registered animals. Here’s a list with descriptions that the Angus breed uses: https://www.angus.org/Nce/Definitions .

We don't select our sires solely based on calving ease and birth weight EPDs. Did you know that we analyze this much information when making our breeding decisions?!

When it comes to calving, we would always prefer a natural birth. However, a general rule of thumb is to intervene after about thirty minutes in the second state of labor (the delivery stage) without any progress, and a bit longer than that for a first-time mama.

This was Hazel’s first calf, and I knew that we lost Hazel’s mom and a baby during a difficult birth when no one was around to assist so I made the decision to intervene a bit quicker than I would have on any other cow. It was pretty evident that Hazel was stuck and wasn’t making any progress so I brought her inside to assist.

We always attempt to pull the calf by hand with a small set of OB chains that go around the calf’s legs first. These chains allow you to get a little more leverage when you pull. If we’re not making progress with that method, our last resort is to pull the calf with what is called a calf jack (that long metal tool on the ground in the video). I did have to use the calf jack to deliver Hazel’s baby (and pinched my finger pretty good in the process!). It took about fifteen minutes from the time I got Hazel in the barn, got all of my supplies ready, to delivery of the calf.

I was in a bit of a hurry by the time I got Hazel in the barn and didn’t set up a camera, but here is a YouTube video that shows you how the calf jack works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HyApxVijCU

Note, there were THREE people actively assisting with the delivery in this YouTube video. It’s always helpful to have a few more hands in these situations, but it doesn’t usually happen that way. We had two dystocias this year and I was alone for both of them!