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When to Assist in Calving

Knowing when to assist in calving can be a tricky matter. It requires a delicate balance between not reacting too quickly and not reacting too late. Finding this balance can require a lot of experience and maybe a little luck.

If you help too early there is a chance that you did not need to help at all. You also run the risk of injuring the calf as well as the cow.

Waiting too long can have very dire results. There is the certain possibility that you will lose both the calf and it’s momma at the same time.

So to help you find the right balance of when to take action or not I have provided some information to get you on the path to success.

What causes dystocia

Before we start on the steps you need to take I felt it best to go over a few basics. As we know if you are needing to pull a calf that means that your cow is experiencing some form of dystocia.

Dystocia is the scientific term for any type of birthing difficulty. There are usually just 3 causes of dystocia that you are likely to come across.

The most common cause is that the calf is “too big”. This usually occurs in young heifers because they have not grown big enough or you are using a bull that sires calves bigger than she can handle. 50% of all of the calving problems are with 1st-calf heifers, 25% are with 2nd-calf heifers. The rest are spread out among all the cows in the herd.

Second most common cause is from the calf not coming out right. This can be caused by either it’s head being turned around or wanting to come out first. The normal way that a calf should come out is with it’s front feet first followed by it’s head facing forward. This should resemble like a “diving forward” type of pose.

Finally a third cause would be a lack of uterine contraction or uterine fatigue. While typically it is rare for this to occur it does happen. It can usually be caused by the cow being in a low nutritional state.

How to prevent dystocia

Now that we have gone over what are some of the causes of dystocia what are some ways that you can prevent it from happening in the first place.

One way that you can do this is to make sure that your heifers are bred at the correct age and weight. This will make sure that she will be big enough to handle giving birth.

Another thing you can do is to select bulls that have been shown for calving ease. Normally this would mean selecting one with a low birth weight EPD but within the last few years they have started to include calving ease among the EPD numbers.

Cows should be in the proper BCS at the time of calving. This means that they should score in the 5 or 6 range. If they are too thin then she may not be able to do it. On the other side if she is too fat then the calf may have difficulty in coming out.

Before breeding season if possible you can measure the pelvic area in replacement or bred heifers. This measurement will tell you if she has enough room for the calf to make it out.

When to assist calving

Odds are that you may not have to assist in calving but in the event that you have to here are a few clues that your assistance is needed.

If you are looking for more information on how to handle dystocia in cattle Bovine Veterinarian Online has a very informative article here.

How to assist calving

You believe that you a cow is needing help in calving so what do you do? Here is a short checklist that will give you some idea.

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