OT:...cow had calf and now cow can't get on its feet

Beef cow just had a calf without problem and now can only crawl around some...calf is ok but looks gant so the cow was able to clean it off.
what to do?...I am going to try calcium,Power Punch and sugar drench...for the calf, I will try some colostrum

Sounds to me like your cow has milk fever , and is in need of calcium directly into the vein. Call a Vet, and get it done sooner than later .

ABSOLUTELY. Sounds like milk fever. Get it treated fast cause it can kill them. My dad had a long thin rubber hose with a coke bottle on one end and a big needle on the other. Mix up some crushed calcium tablets and warm water. Stick it in a vein. Takes three or four minutes and they stand right up. What happens is making milk they strip their bodies. Shorts out their electrical systems. Even if you could shove some Gatoraid down her throat would help.

Sounds like milk fever....you should always have some Ca solution on hand, and IV needle and thin hose. Vet can set you up with what you need- Tie the head back with a nose lead, to her rear leg...feel for the large neck vein, insert needle, and hook up hose and bottle of Ca. Administer slowly...might need a second bottle. Milk fever is caused by cow pulling Ca from her body to make milk for the calf....rapid drawdown immobilizes her...easy to substitute Ca from bottle, will make her recover in minutes. Otherwise, she dies.

i would be phoning the vet and get his advise. from tractor doctors to cow doctors.

milk feaver and 3 hours without treatment and cow is dead.

I'm my 43 years on this earth I have never heard of milk fever. Dad had 30 head of brood cows most of my life and never seem it. Learn something new all the time on here!

Can remember how it happened. The heifer, "new moma" in the big box stall. Had just finished droping her calf. There she is licking and making new moma moos to her calf. About five minutes her eyes roll up into her head and down she goes like a ton of bricks. My dad goes " oh s.. " and runs to the milk house cabinet. He grabbed the coke bottle, hose and half a dozen calcium tablets from a jar. Crushed them really quick and mixed it up in the bottle with some really warm water. Ran back to the stall and found the neck vein. Plugged her in. Took maybe three, four, five minutes. Suddenly her eyeballs come back on line, she shook her ears and head. Stood right up and started back in with her new calf. You would have thought you witnessed the raising of Lazarus. Humans can also have it happen. Very rare because most humans are never going to put out 2 or 3 gallons of milk at any feeding. Fresh cows go bonkers with milk production. When you see them squirting all over the place and it is all high power baby calf milk.

Milk fever is definitely a possibility....look for an S shaped crook in her neck, plus signs of dehydration by twisting her skin. If she is crawling around some, it could also be from a hard calving.....did you pull her or did she calve on her own? A hard calving can pinch rear leg nerves leaving a downer cow that still moves around, more so than does a milk fever downer. Only time and very solid footing under her plus a lifting assist will help. If you do treat for milk fever be absolutely sure there are no air bubbles in the intravenous solution or a heart embolism may occur. Good luck.
Ben

You need to watch Dr. Pol on tv, they are doing this all the time. And general cow maintenance, very informative.

Milk fever is far more common among Dairy cows than beef cows. Dairy cows are bred for milk production, and the change form gestation to lactating is far more traumatic on the cows metabolism. Some are of the opinion the diet given the cows can increase or decrease the risk of milk fever. My experience as a Dairy farmer for the past 38 years tells me, some cows are more genetically predisposed to milk fever than other cows. We have kept track of cows that have gone down post calving with milk fever, and have found their daughters are more likely to have the same problem. We tend not to keep heifers from cows that have milk fever when possible. We might get three each year out of 100 or so calvings. The sooner the cow is treated, the better chances for full recovery. If the cow is down too long, her own body weight defeats her, sometimes shutting off circulation to her legs, in turn making her muscles weak. Another problem can be the cows weight on her chest, causing fluid to build in her lungs. If a cow is down for 24 hours, trying to lift her with a sling on a front end loader or skid steer to get her on her feet, can work wonders. Also giving slow release Theracal subcutaneously will provide the cow with calcium over an extended period. Most times a Vet will also administer some Bannamine to relive pain, which will help the cow to stand also. Pumping anything into the cows stomach is almost as useless as spraying her with ginger ale. She needs Calcium and Dextrose in her blood stream as soon as possible. Bruce

I will ask my father n law if he ever had problems with it, he milk 180 holstiens till about 10 years ago when he retired. We did have a cow that was paralyzed in her back end after she calves. Vet said something happened to her spine. The Cincinnati zoo has people that come get downed animals for feeding the big cats so she was shipped there.

We always gave each cow a 500ml bottle of CMPK in the vein or, in later years, Calcium Gluconate when CMPK was no longer available, as soon after they had the calf as possible. Plus as much warm water as they would drink. More often than not if you didn't do that, they would go down with milk fever, wouldn't clean, and you'd have a mess on your hands.

On the cow, I had a calf from a Holstein cow that was smacked by a Charolais bull. Cow must have pinched a nerve calving as she wouldn't get up. I did the normal things to the calf to get it going (and it survived) but the cow just wouldn't get up. I didn't have anything to hoist her so I had to leave her on the ground and care for her best I could.

6 MONTHS later she decides to and does get up! Surprise surprise. I had figured that her muscle tone and all would have degenerated to the point where she couldn't support herself.

After about a week of healing, guess where she went.....not in the freezer, the other place. Grin

That's my story. HTH

He probably didn't feed them grain,when the phosphorus to Calcium ratio gets out of balance it'll bring on milk fever.We had milk fever problems with out little Rat Terrier pretty common in small dogs.Put her on a high Calcium,low Phosphorus diet before she had pups and right after never had a problem.Never have a problem with my beef herd as I don't feed grain and supply a mineral with lots of Calcium.Grain causes all sorts of problems in ruminants.

Anyone hear what happened to this pair?