Post by lakeportfarms on Feb 16, 2013 20:14:32 GMT -5
Hans take this with no disrespect, I know you purchased Debbie as a bred heifer. She might have not been mature enough to be bred, since I believe she was 2 months short of being 2 years of age when she calved. Debbie is a chondro carrier I believe?
Was Dr. Kaiser aware of this?
With all that being said 60 lbs for a calf is large for a Dexter.
How large was Debbies sire which I think you said is also the sire of this calf? Do you have birth weights on him?
Once again thanks for posting all the info.
Barb
Barb,
Yes, Debbie is a chondro carrier and Dr. Kaiser was aware of this. We believed that she was going to calve shortly before 2 years, that is why Sheril and I discussed giving her a lute shot and finding a smaller bull to breed her to. However, the breeding date was earlier than what we were told. Debbie was due to calve in mid-late March, supposedly. Part of the problem we had with determining the chondro status was the VERY lengthy time it took to receive the results back from TAMU on both Debbie and Louise. It took 6 weeks if I recall correctly. We waited quite a long time for genotyping on a couple of bulls then too. Apparently the lab was shorthanded or something at the time. We only had Mike and so we would have risked a bulldog had we bred her to him.
Though they had advertised Debbie for sale, we had our eye on Debbie's mom, Louise, for quite a while as she's out of the same dam as Mike. We managed to persuade them to sell us Louise along with Debbie. Louise is also a carrier, though her registration stated she was a non-carrier for chondrodysplasia (an obvious error). We had her tested for chondro, PHA, and A2 and had it corrected along with testing Debbie for the same. As I mentioned, the chondro status took a long time, because we sent it to TAMU to save the $15 difference. We knew their PHA and A2 status long before confirmation of chondro. That is why I now use UCDavis whenever I can.
Debbie's sire, Hercules, was a pretty good size bull, but we don't have any calving information on him. Obviously he throws some pretty big ones from at least this one experience. We've never had a calf above 38 lbs with Mike, and many of his are under 30 so this came as quite a shock to us. Louise was also bred by Hercules, and she had a 40 lb. heifer calf a week or so before Debbie. Like Debbie, we decided to let Louise carry her Hercules calf. I never would have expected a 60 lb. calf out of Debbie. I guess my question is that since Debbie is out of Hercules, and was bred by Hercules, are there some genetics at play here that led to such a large calf, even though Debbie is a pretty small cow. All in all, we were pretty lucky to get that calf out of her without a C-Section.
Debbie seems to be doing well, the swelling has diminished and she's back with some of the young heifers