Hairball Surgery In Calves

Abstract

In Montana beef herds we occassionally see an unthrifty condition develop in one-to four-week old calves as a result of pyloric obstruction by masses of ingested hair and other foreign materials. These calves are often passed over as being "poor doers'' and the condition goes undiagnosed and untreated more often than not. It isn't until a rancher has a small epidemic of these calves that he will think anything of it. Some will be dragged off to a gully with the rancher shrugging it off as a normal loss of a calf that "ain't never been quite right". Others will linger on and continue to be "poor doers" that eventually outgrow the problem. In either case the calf is unprofitable at best and often a total loss.