How to understand that a cow will calve soon, and what to do in order not to lose either the mother or the offspring

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In the life of every farmer there comes a happy moment when the number of heads in a herd of cattle is about to increase - the calving of a cow. How not to get confused and recognize the symptoms of early calving in cows in time? How is calving in a young cow, what are its stages and consequences? How can you help an animal to pass such an important stage of its life cycle? How to properly care not only for a woman in labor, but also for newborn calves in order to avoid death? Here are some popular questions that you can get answers to if you study the presented review.

Calving a cow

What is meant by the term "calving"

The term "calving" refers to the last period of pregnancy in cattle, ending with the birth of offspring. This stage occurs approximately 280 days after fertilization of the animal in any convenient way (natural or artificial). It is important to understand that the time of the onset of labor depends on the breed of the animal, the components of its diet and even the sex of the fetus, therefore, it can shift both forward and backward by 8-10 days. In order not to get confused, there is a calving table for cows (this is a significant help for farmers, it helps to exclude premature births in cows).

In order for the animal to give birth normally and a calf was born, you need to figure out how to determine the approaching calving of a cow. The thing is that only thorough preparation can get the desired result. If we draw an analogy with a person, then a woman is observed by doctors throughout her pregnancy, undergoes courses, therefore, she knows the approximate date of a meeting with a newborn.

In the old days, they learned to determine the sex of the future calf by the state of the udder. If the cow's front part swells before giving birth, then it is assumed that a female will be born, the back - a bull. This method has become popular, because its results are reliable in almost 90% of cases.

Symptoms of an approaching date

How do you know when a cow will calve and whether a veterinarian is needed? What are the signs of calving in a cow? - these are questions of concern to many farmers, because you need to have time to prepare for the birth of a newborn.

It is not difficult to recognize the onset of the period in question if you keep a calving calendar. But what about someone who forgot to fix the date when insemination was performed, or missed natural fertilization? Such a person will be helped by the signs of calving in a cow. The harbingers that mark the beginning of calving are as follows:

• change in behavior (the heifer behaves restlessly, she exhibits nervousness, fearfulness, frequent lagging behind the herd, turning her head to the ischial tubercles and tail, swaying from side to side);
• redness and slight swelling of the external genital organs;
• the appearance of mucus or viscous fluid from the vagina;
• the udder is poured, therefore, there is an increase in milk productivity;
• the appearance of discharge from the nipples (this is colostrum);
• loss of the sacrum (relaxation of the ligaments in the pelvic region);
• frequent mooing;
• the animal tries to spend most of the day in a supine position.

If the first signs of calving have been recorded, you need to start preparing for the appearance of a newborn.

How to prepare an animal for calving

There is an opinion that cattle do not need to be fed during the calving period (supposedly this will facilitate the process of delivery). It is incorrect, because with food, any living creature receives the energy that is so necessary to maintain life.

Preparing a cow for calving begins with enhancing nutrition (the first thing a farmer should do to make sure the cow is pregnant). This does not mean that you need to increase the serving size. It is enough to make the feed fortified:

• include special additives (salt, chalk) in the diet;
• exclude second-class products;
• to offer the animal treats, which include sugar beets, bran, silage and pasture grass, or the so-called "pasture".

Why pasture and not quality hay? Because the animal itself controls the content of certain nutrients in the body. Naturally, there are most of them in fresh grass. Plus, no farmer can be 100% confident in the materials chosen for hay and in full compliance with the rules for harvesting it, unless he himself was engaged in it.

If you do not dry out the grass, then pathogenic microorganisms begin to multiply in the stacks, causing a putrefactive process. It is not difficult to guess what will happen to an animal that has eaten such food.

As for nutrition, a pregnant individual should eat a variety of foods at least 3 times a day. At the same time, do not forget about a large amount of liquid (only pure water is permissible, served immediately before feeding the concentrates).

It is clear that it becomes more and more difficult for pregnant individuals to move around every day, therefore, in the late stages of pregnancy, the animal should be stopped and placed in a special enclosure.

Don't forget about hygiene. A clumsy animal needs special care more than ever, so it is worth adding daily cleaning with straw bundles and brushes, treatment of the most contaminated parts of the body with warm water, followed by drying with a cloth. If redness occurs on the genitals, you must immediately call a veterinarian and disinfect the affected areas with a weak solution of furacilin or potassium permanganate.

For 2 months of approaching the expected date of delivery, the animal needs to follow the instructions for preparing the cow for calving: adjust the diet and launch.

How a cow should be launched

A timely launch of cattle helps to get a good offspring and subsequent milk yield. For those who do not know what is hidden under these terms, the explanation: this is the termination of milking. You can't just take and not milk a cow (milk stagnation can provoke the formation of adhesions and inflammation). How does the launch look right? Required:

• Reduce the amount of consumed root vegetables and other juicy components.
• Reduce the volume of fluid offered.
• Gradually reduce the number of milkings to 1 time per day.
• Switch to the regime of a day in a day.
• If the cow gives no more than 1 liter of milk, you can stop touching the udder.

Recommendation: do you want to quickly launch without harm to cattle? Stop massaging the udder before milking.

Feeding cows before calving is one of the key points in promoting full-fledged offspring, which has its own characteristics:

• In the first decade of launch, you need to slightly reduce the amount of food consumed (by about 20-30%).
• In the second part, on the contrary, calculate the good nutrition.
• In the third and fourth, increase by 15-20% (these values ​​will have to be calculated independently using a calculator).
• Immediately before childbirth (3-4 days before labor approaches, when colostrum begins to appear), exclude fodder and transfer to hay.

Only compliance with the above recommendations will allow avoiding difficult childbirth and subsequent diseases of the reproductive system, provoking the impossibility of further reproduction of offspring.

How to recognize early calving

Before calving, the cow begins to change behavior: she lies on her side and often mumbles - these are the harbingers of childbirth in a cow. In this case, it is worth immediately delivering the animal to a specially prepared place - a clean stall. Naturally, it must be prepared in advance:

• the contents of the stall are removed (old hay, droppings);
• the selected place of delivery and the surrounding area are disinfected with special compounds;
• The pen is filled with new, clean bedding material.

It is no secret that at specialized factories there is a special sterile room, where the calving of a cow takes place, the signs of which portend the early birth of a calf or heifer.

Ideally, in order to prevent childbirth in unsuitable conditions and not to harm the animal, no earlier than a week before calving, the cow can be placed in this prepared pen and continue to periodically look into the special calendar to calculate the exact time of birth of the calf.

You already know how to recognize the calving of a cow (signs of an approaching calving are the right flares). It remains only to figure out how a cow gives birth, what to do to protect the animal from death and give life to a newborn. To do this, you can continue reading the review or watch the calving of the cow (video can be found on the Internet).

If the cow is walking, spotting has been noticed, or thrush is suspected, then a veterinarian should be called, only he will be able to give recommendations on how to eliminate the adverse effect, and, if necessary, to stimulate labor. That is why it is important to know the exact timing of the insemination of an individual.

It is important to have time to process the animal's body and hooves with a weak solution of lysol or potassium permanganate before the birth (in extreme cases, use a soapy composition). It will not be superfluous to offer help to the cow - a special drink (for 1 liter of water, 6.25 g of salt).

Cow giving birth

Physically strong and healthy individuals are able to give birth on their own, an old cow gives birth standing on her feet. At the same time, it is important to ensure constant monitoring in order to prevent damage to the newborn (an exhausted mother will fall on him) and to know how the cow calves.

Increasing contractions allow the fetus to gradually move along the birth canal. In this case, a grayish fetal bladder appears outside, which should rupture on its own. If this does not happen, then a person has to intervene in order to help the cow (by external influence to break the bubble).

After that, it is important to observe how the calf walks. A safe start can be as follows:

• the hooves of the front legs are directed downward;
• the hooves of the hind legs point upwards.

Complicated birth in a cow (when the calf comes out head first, back of the body, or twins are expected) should proceed only under the supervision of an experienced doctor: he or an obstetric nurse will take the newborns and exclude stagnation. The same applies to the birth of cubs in a first-calf.

A normal cow's birth lasts about 30 minutes (the first calving in cows may be slightly prolonged). If the cows cannot calve, then specialists need to intervene urgently. How to complete the birthing process in cows can only be understood by a veterinarian (he puts an injection and introduces stimulating solutions or helps to get the calf soon).The ideal option is when cows are calving by a knowledgeable person.

By the way, folk signs say: if you dream that a cow is giving birth, then expect profit. A cow calved - a twofold omen, because it depends on the sex of the offspring (a heifer is a success, a bull is a misfortune).

Calf care

Reception of a newborn should be done on a clean burlap. When the calf is born, it is necessary to check whether the umbilical cord has broken or not. If this does not happen, then you will have to cut it off yourself (at a distance of no more than 15 cm from the body), then squeeze out the blood clots from it and only after that do the cauterization with iodine (you can simply dip it into the solution).

Advice: it is advisable to process the remains of the umbilical cord twice a day for the next week.

After that, it remains to put the newborn on mommy, who will lick it (removes mucus from the body and improves blood circulation in natural conditions). During this procedure, care must be taken that the cow does not touch the baby with the horns. If, for some reason, an adult refuses to clean the calf, then a person should do this. When working with straw bundles or rags at home, you need to be careful and avoid excessive grating of certain parts of the body.

Feeding the calf at first is simple - expressed colostrum, because it helps to populate the microflora with the necessary organisms. Between feedings, you can give clean warm water to drink.

Two weeks later, the babies are transferred to three meals a day, adding table salt and chalk. If diarrhea appears, then it is enough to add boiled water (you can dilute milk with it).

At 16 days old, the calf is offered small amounts of hay. By the end of the first month of life, it is allowed to add carrots (no more than 150 g per day). Preventive vaccinations are on schedule (if the newborn is healthy).

Naturally, the hygiene of the individual and the cleanliness of the room are the key to the health of the calf, so the skin should be cleaned daily, and the coatings should change as it gets dirty, especially in winter. Walking in the fresh air is good for a growing body.

Cow care

When the animal is born, it is given time to rest, and the farmer is given time to complete the calving calendar. For this, the cow that has given birth should lie down for about 30-40 minutes. Physiology is such that during this time the following happens: the uterine cavity is cleared, the afterbirth departs, strength is restored. To help a woman in labor, you can offer her a slightly salted solution in half an hour.

A little later (after the separation of the placenta), you need to change the litter and milk it, after washing the udder (especially in first-movers). The resulting colostrum is provided to the calf as the first food. In the future, it will be necessary to increase the number of milkings in certain cows, such as first-borns, in order to increase milk production.

It is important not to damage the udder, therefore, before expressing, be sure to massage the nipples, only then the lactation will be perfect. Do not forget to wash your udders before and after procedures.

After giving birth, the cow needs to normalize her nutrition. How does this happen? If there were no problems, the following formula is suitable for the diet:

• Immediately give the volume of hay and silage required by weight (lactation starts).
• The next day, add 1 kg of bran soaked in water (can be replaced with rice). Subsequently, gradually increase the amount of bran to 2 kg per day.
• After 3 days, root crops are included in the diet (lactation increases).
• Only after a week can you switch to full feeding.

For those individuals who had a difficult calving or it ended in twins, the doctor announces the correct nutrition schedule for the next month.

Advice for farmers: you need to monitor the protein content of food, otherwise the milk will be "empty". At first, it is better for cattle to offer foods high in easily digestible carbohydrates.

Complications after calving

If calving in animals does not occur without the intervention of humanity, a specialist will have to monitor the individual after giving birth. The thing is that complications can occur, such as damage to the uterus or birth canal, poor-quality cleaning, postpartum paresis, hypocalcemia. These dire complications are not difficult to recognize. Here is the life-saving table:

When fixing any symptoms, you need to call a veterinarian to eliminate complications and save the life of the cow.

Calving a cow and receiving a calf are significant events that should be approached consciously: prepare in advance (watch photos and videos, know how many cows have already calved, be able to identify signs of imminent birth, keep a calendar of insemination, follow the above recommendations and use the services of veterinarians ). If there is little information about the hotel presented in the review, use the material of the cow calving video. There you will clearly see how to identify an impending calving of a cow, how normal calving is occurring, and that cows may not be calving. That's all we wanted to tell you about cow calving.