calf born blind

wiggy123

had a nice Angus pedigree heifer calf born yesterday afternoon, to a first calver...normal+fast labour, all straight forward...
heifer got ok silage+pre calver lick since put indoors for the winter!
any ideas? why mayb born blind...
am 90% sure..bumping into gates/cow/me...
eyes seem grey around pupil..is odd
how would i know for sure? apart from get vet...
am ripping--as its a lovely heifer,with good breeding.... tough!!

uncle had a heifer, friesan heifer go blind at grass..mid summer! very odd..
when vet was out for test...
said was unusal--but she was def fully blind...must be a defincity!
any idea's
shes indoors-being fatten... in great order! it never held her back...
was unusal to see ur in field+ from field to field...
was dodgy for man..haha

EGAR

Vitamin A deficiency can cause blindness in newborn calves. This is often accompanied by doming of the forehead, thickening of the carpal joints, incoordination and weakness.

wiggy123

any cure now?
sounds bad so..hes drank cow!
mayb i'm being foolish--but to me, i'm 90% sure its blind..
is very lively...alert--good on its feet! still indoors

LostCovey

wiggy123 wrote: »

any cure now?
sounds bad so..hes drank cow!
mayb i'm being foolish--but to me, i'm 90% sure its blind..
is very lively...alert--good on its feet! still indoors

BVD is a possible cause of blindness in newborn calves in Ireland

whelan1

had one years ago but it also had developmental problems , found it hard to walk etc , we actually kept it until it was 2 years of age and sent it to the factory

Bodacious

EGAR wrote: »

Vitamin A deficiency can cause blindness in newborn calves. This is often accompanied by doming of the forehead, thickening of the carpal joints, incoordination and weakness.

Thats interesting i had when i was a young lad a first calver also but as you say he seemed to also have a kink in his back/funny walk which only got worse with age, went down altogether in shed so had to kill him, think i may only have broke even on him:mad:

LostCovey

EGAR wrote: »

Vitamin A deficiency can cause blindness in newborn calves. This is often accompanied by doming of the forehead, thickening of the carpal joints, incoordination and weakness.

Has this ever occurred in Ireland?

LC

EGAR

Yes, there was a study done in Scotland which included incidents from NI.

LostCovey

EGAR wrote: »

Yes, there was a study done in Scotland which included incidents from NI.

Don't be teasing us, tell us more.......

Genuinely interested in this. Was this in animals housed for a long time on very poor quality fodder?

LC

EGAR

I dig it out it was in a vet magazine from last year, my OH had a blind calf born which is why I remember. I will have a look and scan it.

pbthevet

Have a farmer client with 3 calves born blind here and same grey eye.

Did you ever find cause/cure?

p dogg

About 20 years ago a black white head bucket reared weanling heifer went blind after dosing, my father and grandfather think they dosed her twice by mistake, she lived till 17 years of age and left a super calf every year, as a result of being blind she was never dehorned and she was kept in paddocks around the homeplace feeling her way round with her horns, no problem coming for meal and water atall, she was like a member of the family and was a sad day when she died, her offspring never were blind and we have a charolais daughter of hers in the suckler herd still!

whisky_galore

Had a blind one (no eyeballs at all, just slits where they were supposed to be)

Kept in a small field where it couldn't possibly fall into anything with another animal recovering from a fall as 'company'. It built up a mental image of the field after a while and knew where the fence, water and feed troughs were.