I am back to posting on my blog for the next and final semester before graduating. I plan on continuing my educational blog while sharing stories and information about the various responsibilities and topics involved with the management of a dairy farm. I am very much looking forward to sharing my knowledge and learning more about the dairy industry together over the next fifteen weeks!
Today I want to share a unique calf we have on our farm that was born with an extra appendage! The term used to identify an animal that has one too many or too few appendages is coined polymelia. This calf has an extra claw positions between the two normally placed claws on her front right leg. Feet and legs are very important for a cow as they will eventually support over 1,000lbs of body weight, so it was crucial that we got this "extra toe" addressed by our veterinarian. Fortunately for us, our little lady is going to be alright and when she grows up a bit more the extra toe will be removed and cause no issues to her.
To better understand the uniqueness to this situation I did more research on cattle hoof anatomy and found a very informative article written by Erin Malone posted by the University of Minnesota which can be found with this link Cattle Hoof Anatomy The figure below represents the average cattle hoof and we can see the characteristic medial claw (the inner claw closest to the body) and the lateral claw otherwise described as the outer claw. Our lady has a third claw located between the lateral and medial claw, seemingly attached to the fleshy space referred to as the interdigital space.
Today we had one new jersey bull calf.
We shipped 4,852 gallons of milk!
No comments:
Post a Comment