After delivery is the most difficult and stressful time for cows even when they are healthy. It’s is one important thing for cow’s owner to know the essential ways to take care of cow after delivery,for the sake of making the cow feel more comfortable. There always a difficulty or even complication when cows given birth even if they already done it before. Here are some ways to take care of cow after delivery to help you prepare for them.
The moment the calf is deliver, the mother might want to take a rest, it’s a normal thing. While the mother is taking a rest you need to make sure that the calf is breathing. You can help by clearing the amniotic fluid away from its nose then tickle it away with some straw, and then you need to put some water into their ears, or try to perform artificial respiration. The artificial respiration is similar to performing CPR to human, and could be done by extending the calf’s head upwards so the way for air can be open and get through their nose to breath.
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Put The Mother and Her Calf Together
When you sure that the calf is breathing normally, you need to put the calf with their mother in an isolated pen with some hay and water. Mother calf soon would clean the calf because the calf still have placenta. It is one natural thing to do after she gave birth, don’t try to help or interfere, the placenta will shed in a few hours and you need to prevent the cow from eating it. After that, you need to make sure that the calf is drinking the first milk from their mother, and the umbilical cord will break on its own. And you need to keep the placenta away from them.
Just like any other animal, they also need to be together with their babies
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Things to Do Right After Giving Birth
When your cow is giving birth in the winter, you need to prepare a lukewarm water for her to drink. You need to protect them from any extreme temperature and prepare a safe and comfortable shelter from the cold wind. When they just give birth to her calf, you need to prevent them from her wild instinct of eating the calf. Not only the calf that need to be clean, but the mother also need to be clean with clean and warm water. Feed warm crude sugar mixed with bran mash for cow after delivery. And supply moistened bran with crude sugar or molasses.
And you also want to read some tips how to treat your dog after they give birth
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Milking Cow After Delivery
When cow are milk for the first time after the delivery process, you need to make sure that all the blockages from treat are removed before you milk them. If the cow’s nipple are hard and inflamed, you don’t need to worry. You might get the milk in limited quantity, so you just need to milk them three times a day until the inflammation disappears from the nipple. Give them enough calcium and phosphorus through their meal, to help preventing milk fever after delivery because it is a common thing to happen in high yielding cows.
For cows after delivery, they are on lactation period and need a high nutrient especially on the first two months of the lactation. The require nutrition are different in every cows, increasing the concentrates should be done gradually from 0.5 kg to 0.7 kg a day until the appropriate intake is reached. The milk production will rise on the 6 to 8 weeks through lactation while that happen, their meal also increase gradually. And the peaks usually happen on 12 to 14 weeks. If they don’t meet the proper balance of nutrition they need, it will produce a negative energy and not so high quality milk. The amount of nutrition should be given until the milk they produce are no longer get affected by how much feeding they get.
An infection on navel area can be very hard to deal with, so it is better if you can prevent it to happen. Every care and attention should start from disinfection and hygiene during and after delivery. Prepare a nice and dry pen for them to rest before and after delivery, and use chlorhexidine and alcohol based disinfectant. Spray or dip the navel immediately to the disinfection just after the cow’s give birth.
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Protection From Infection
Cows after delivery are more sensitive to any infection. To prevent them from any infection, you need to keep everything that relate to the cow clean, and keep them in hygienic environment. The cow’s pen also should be disinfected. Any placenta or discharge of parturition should be buried properly with lime. There will be a vaginal discharge in cow for about 2-3 weeks, it is normal thing due regeneration of productive organs. The vaginal discharge shouldn’t be smell, if there are smell coming out from there then there must be something wrong with their genital. It indicate that they get an infection, you must separate them from the other healthy cows and get your vet to treat your cow.
How long after cows giver birth until they can get pregnant again is depend on each cow condition. If she is healthy, did not have any difficulty during the delivery and not a first timer definitely have sort postpartum interval time. The average for beef cow to be pregnant again after the postpartum is between 50 to 60 days in average, if they have some problem it usually take about 90-120 days in average. During those postpartum interval time, it is a good time to give them sexual rest and allow the reproductive system to prepare for the next conception and pregnancy.
The most common cause of death for cow after delivery is hygiene. Cow’s owner or farmer tend to put aside the hygiene factor on the pen where the cow is giving birth. They might look healthy and fine on the few hours after delivery, but after few days the cow start to loose their appetite and had fever. Usually if it doesn’t get any professional treatment from your vet, the cow will drop dead within a day. The dirty pen and places for delivery usually cause the cows to have an infection on their uterus. When the placenta is already seen, usually a lot of people try to tie them with stone or banana bells to help the placenta to drop. But the weight will cause more problems by swelling the tissue junction between the placenta and uterus and it will delay of dropping the placenta. This also cause of infection to the uterus. Straining may indicate infection or retention of the placenta. The farmer should seek help for any animal that strains when discharging the fluid.