Baby calf with a clubfoot Picture Added

[Nickey]

We took a baby calf from a friend who did not have the time or patience to bottle feed him. He is about 12 days old and has a clubfoot. Can I wrap it to make it straighten out? A splint? Or should we leave it alone and hope it straightens out? Thanks for any help.

 

[Okie Amazon]

As soon as you can post pics, let us see. If you have a pic, you could send it to me and I'll post it for you.

 

[goodhors]

Husband looked at the photo, said calf has contracted tendon, rather than club foot. Other front foot is also contracted a little. Could be a mineral deficiency, maybe selenium?

Calf also has a bad ankle in the back, cocked to the side, using one claw more than the other, on right side.

He suggested you get a Vet in to look at the whole calf. You might be dealing with Joint Ill, an infection thru the navel. Vet will be
able to tell you if this situation is worth fighting or you will just be pouring money down a rathole. Calf might never get better. The
sooner calf is seen by the Vet, the quicker solutions can be worked on, if Vet thinks they will be effective. Get a cost and time line for
calf to improve before starting treatment. May be very expensive with long recovery and attention needed to make it happen.

If this is truly Joint Ill, I have not heard of good recoveries in horses, despite thousands of dollars spent. Colts were never going to
grow up to be useful. Most are put down. Calves have a shorter life as a meat product, so may be fixable for the short term, if not
too expensive or time consuming for you.

Good Luck

 

[WildRoseBeef]

Husband looked at the photo, said calf has contracted tendon, rather than club foot. Other front foot is also contracted a little. Could be a mineral deficiency, maybe selenium?
Good Luck

A calf with White Muscle Disease wouldn't look like that. They would have founder-like symptoms have nutritional muscular dystrophy (in other words, be painfully thin), paralysis characterized with the inability to stand then most likely up and die suddenly due to sudden heart failure. I've known calves that are born with selenium deficiency not making it the first few hours after birth. So I have my doubts that the calf has WMD, even though that the symptoms are often missed in calves.

Now, according to a little late-nigh researching, do neither splinting to stretch it out or wrapping it up. Exercise may help correct the contracted tendons, or a vitamin A injection or copper supplementation via bolus, injection, or in a salt-mineral mix. Note, though, that SOMETIMES this can be corrected. Other times, though, the deformity is permanent, but that depends on the cause.

Thus most cases of contracted tendons are caused by copper deficiency, not selenium.

 

[she-earl]

We have had calves that occasionally will be "tight" like that. It generally is just a tendon that needs to be stretched out. If the calf doesn't have trouble standing, it very likely will straighten on its own. If it just wants to buckle all the time, I would wrap it. An inexpensive way to do this, is to take a piece of PVC pipe and saw it in half length-wise. The length should be from the just around the hoof to just below its "knee". The diameter of the half piece of pipe should be such that it will fit comfortably around the back of the calf's leg. Then use vet wrap and wrap the pipe snuggly to the leg. Keep an eye on it daily to make sure it doesn't become to tight. If it appears to get tight, remove the vet wrap and rewrap. It doesn't appear that it should take to many days to straighten out. I have had calves that have been worse and with wrapping have straightened out. Even after it has straightened, the calf will walk kind of funny on it (more stiff legged) but it won't affect the calf's health.

 

[jhm47]

I've had many like this over the years. They do eventually straighten out. We just leave them alone as long as they can get around enough to eat. I think the problem comes from their feet being bent in utero, and their tendons don't stretch out enough to straighten their feet. After a few weeks they get stretched and the calf is just fine. I've had some with both feet in that position. They recovered just fine and you couldn't see any after effects in the fall.

 

[she-earl]

I forgot to mention that you should put some kind of padding between the PVC pipe and calf's leg.

 

[Nickey]

Thank you all for the quick replys and all the help.

 

[goodhors]

Should not have said Selenium, wrong mineral.

We see this sometimes with young horses, Epiphisitus, where they have a Calcium-Phosphorus and other minerals, imbalance.
Tendons in front tighten, so horse is going on toe tips. Best solution then is to remove all the good feed, feed them the poor
quality hay, keep the horse outside to move as much as possible. Seems to get the young horse back in self-balance. And
the "nicer" the owner is feeding young horse, the more often they seem to get Epiphisitus! You can just be "too nice" as an
owner, causing your horse problems!

But this is a cattle question, so perhaps the calf got too much of one mineral when his mom was carrying him. That
cause the tendon contraction. With horses you have to interfere seriously, to change the tendon tightening, or they won't be
useful as they get older.

Glad to hear that calves seem to self-stretch the tendons in most cases, going on the healthy lives in the herd. Perhaps
your local Vet could say what causes the tight tendons by having seen it before. Some local mineral shortage or overage
in feeding the mother cow, so you can avoid the problem with your animals.

 

[WildRoseBeef]

But this is a cattle question, so perhaps the calf got too much of one mineral when his mom was carrying him. That
cause the tendon contraction.

Yes, like too much molybdenum, which often can prevent copper from being utilized in the cow's body. Other minerals that can be too much of a good thing and tie up copper are iron, zinc, lead or calcium carbonate.