Tissues around the birth canal become soft the vulva is enlarged and flabby. A long string of mucus may hang from the vulva. Other signs of impending labor include mucus discharge from the vulva as the cervical plug/seal softens and is expelled. Occasionally the plug in the end of the teat comes out, with secretion on the end of the teat. Even if the udder has been large for many days, the teats themselves often don’t become full and distended until the cow is nearly ready to calve. One clue that calving will take place within about 24 hours is the teats filling. Others “bag up” overnight and can fool you they may calve before you realize they are ready. Some cows and heifers have so much udder development that you think calving is imminent, but they go many more days before the actual event. It may begin enlarging as early as six weeks before she calves (especially in heifers) or may suddenly fill during the last few days. One of the first signs of approaching calving is development of her udder. As a cow or heifer nears the end of gestation, her body makes changes to aid the birth process. The cow may calve ahead of or later than her projected due date and it can sometimes be a challenge to predict when she’ll calve. If either the sire or dam has genetics for a longer gestation, results may be mixed, depending on which trait is inherited by the calf. If both sire and dam have short gestation genetics, the calf will be born earlier. Instead of siring a 140-pound calf, they’d sire an 80-pound calf and it would be born a lot easier,” he says.įetal development and rate of maturation (determining when the calf reaches full term and triggers labor) is influenced by his genetics. I found some that fit that category and started using those. I was looking for Charolais bulls that had 283-day-or-less average gestation length. They had exact gestation lengths on all of them. “I went to the Canadian Conception to Consumer test, where they verified bulls through their testing program. ![]() So I started looking for bulls that sired calves with shorter gestation so I could get my cows bred back on time,” he says. When a cow calves 10 days or two weeks late (and has a big calf and a hard birth), she’s losing that amount of time to recover and rebreed. As I was waiting, 283 days would pass, and 10 days later I’d be still waiting and thinking she was bred to the clean-up bull.Ībout 15 days later she had a 140-pound calf and it’s obvious it’s not by the clean-up bull – it’s that many days late. ![]() “I’d note that a certain cow was bred on a certain date and should calve on such-and-such day. I moved onto the place just as the cows were starting to calve,” he says. “When I bought this ranch in the late 1960s, the Charolais cows on the place were A.I.-bred to some French bulls that were popular at that time. Buddy Westphal, a Charolais breeder at Valley View Charolais Ranch near Polson, Montana, has been interested in gestation length for many years – particularly as it applies to calving ease and giving cows more time to recover and breed back.
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