Investigation of a Congenital Defect Problem in Cow-Calf Herds

Abstract

In March 1985 the manager of the largest cow-calf operation in Prince George, British Columbia presented one of us (CSR) with a disproportionately dwarfed, dead, newborn calf. He stated that he was seeing a disconcerting number of these calves for the second consecutive year and that he would like to know what was causing them. The calves tended to have normal sized bodies but short legs; they tended to be weak at birth; when they could stand they did so on hyperextended pasterns and had trouble ambulating on extremely unstable joints (Figure 1). By the end of the calving season we had seen more than 35 of these calves, most of which were dead or unmarketable.