Calving 2025

Sad news out of North Kerry over the weekend, Farmer killed by a cow after calving.

Just goes to show you never know when one will turn on you.

Stay safe all this calving season.

Ive a cow here that calved 5 days ago, she took a turn for the worst yesterday and had vet out yesterday evening to her, said he thought she was toxic and possibly milk fever as well. Fired a load of bottles into her to cover all angles,

The cow is not eating and her elder is empty to say the least, now her calf is a flyer and anytime the cow gets up the calf is flat out sucking trying to get a belly full but not much there, I tried feeding the calf this morning but she not impressed with the false teat she wants the real thing only, even tried holding the bottle in under the udder and the min the calf would feel the rubber teat in its mouth she would pull away.

Is there handy way of getting her to suck a bottle when still on the cow or am I as well wait and see does the cow pull through, they are in a pen on there own so the calf is not sucking another cow etc, just trying to supplement the calf for a few days and give the cow a chance as well.

Don't want the calf wasting away and having another problem in another few days

Any advice would be appreciated,

+1 on the ivy. Get a bottle of ketivit as well, she probably don't have ketosis but I gives a drop to any cow that gets off form.

Corner the calf and keep squirting the nipple in his mouth. Have the milk hot, 38 degrees, that's what he used too.

Bad day to enter the world but they found a bit of shelter.

No sure you'd know if they are full and if the cow had a quarter or two empty.

How do people fill in the calving difficulty?

I see the ICBF have a guideline out ( https://www.icbf.com/using-the-calving-difficulty-trait-to-minimize-difficult-calvings/ ) on it. I would have always classified Some Assistance as ropes with simple jack work (easy pull or no hassle) and Serious Difficulty if a big calf with awkward jacking and need help from a neighbor.

@anthony500_1 I would be the same as yourself, I would alway fill it out as I have found. I generally use easy calving AI LM bulls and most of the time the cows will calf by themselves. Ir

It is the size and vigour I would find harder to call. There can be some difference between an AA and a LM yet both could be large for their breed & vigour. But compared to each other one would be small but alot more vigorous.

Everything from the calfs size and vigour to the cows milk and docility is supposed to be filled out using only your own farm as a base. If you have calf breeds including AA, Lim and CH then generally the AA will be the 1s and 2s, the LMs the 3s and the CHs the 4s and 5s, their size or vigour for their breed has nothing to do with how each calf is scored, it is as a comparison to the other calves born in your herd, your smallest calf is 1, your biggest calf is 5 and then score the rest against them, same goes for vigour, milk, docility etc. Breed would then be taken into account when the information is being interpreted by ICBF.

Its very hard to size a calf. 2 cows one 900kgs, one cow 550kgs, you will have two very different sizes calf's but in comparison to there dams they both could be said to be an average size, if there born unassisted etc. I'll put them down as average size as I fell that's prob the most accurate unless they are unusually small. Then if it's a big pull I'll put them down as big as generally they will be.

I'm not a dairy farmer so I know very little about EBI so my comments are based on Euro star index and recordings required for BDGP and SCEP schemes, recordings, how to record information and the purpose for them which was thought to farmers in the training programmes for these schemes. You then had farmers shouting about how the training was pointless but now cant fill in a simple form properly. Also I dont see what records other countries have has got to do with anything, we are where we are, we have farmer groups complaining that ICBF need to be using the records submitted by farmers but then we have farmers here saying they dont know how to record things so we could be better off not using these wrong records.

Sorry I took you to be talking about dairy when you said EBI. I dont see how recording negative traits would hurt anyone if farmers record information correctly and the records are actually used to create ratings for animals, can you explain where you would see the problem with this? If a bull is genetically supposed to be easy calved but ends up throwing monsters and every farmer that used him recorded normal calving and normal size calf naturally his calving figures wont go up but his reliability % will and so the next unfortunate that goes to look for an easy calving bull sees his figures and reliability % and ends bursting his cows with monster calves. Now on the other hand if farmers with the monster calves record hard calving and bigger than normal calves his calving difficulty will go up along with his reliability and the next lad coming will know what he's getting himself into.

I have thought it plenty but it's looking like you havent. Seems to me like all you're doing is chasing stars and not actual improvements and only want an animal to have the stars for the sake of it. If your animal is small at birth and achieves good growth rates then they, the bull and cow deserve to have high stars, the only way this will be achieved is if these things are recorded properly. If you have a monster calf that burst the cow to calve it, maybe pay for a vet to do a section and for drugs after, cows calving interval maybe increase then and not calve for 13 or 14 months meaning the calf has to cover an additional couple of months where the cow has produced nothing then the bull and or cow should have lower stars. Similar to a lad only registering a calf when its a couple of months old to cover up bad growth rates rather than have stock that are actually performing then the only one your fooling by recording these things wrong is yourself and screwing other farmers who are trying to do things properly because figures will be skewed by this information.

People seem to forget that any false data submitted by farmers to ICBF, late recording of birth dates, calving difficulty etc etc would tend to be spread equally across all bulls. This in effect cancels all this 'Bad data' out. The star indexes are derived from all relations to the animal, and not just it's mother and sire.

Unless ICBF have changed it when the BDGP training was done it was to compare all calves within your herd, it can’t be left to your own interpretation of what size an animal of a certain breed is because your opinion of sizes could be very different to my opinion. As you say above you don’t class a calf as big and a hard calving unless it takes 2 lads on a jack to pull him out of a cow where as I work full time off farm and would call any need for use of the jack as too big and a hard calving, I’m looking for all normal calving as in no assistance at all so straight away there we would be contradicting each other.

there’s no denying that they’re flawed but if people want the recorded data to be used then it needs to to be recorded properly and then if it is the actually better animals should win out. So are you saying you record everything correctly such as calving difficulty, dob etc? And if so why make the comment above that if you record anything negative you could hurt yourself?