Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Smallest calf I have ever seen.

Its hard to tell from the pics but I don't think so. Like human dwarfs, dwarf cattle aren't just small, they're misshapen.

True.

Hard to tell from the photo, but a very prominent forehead in a young calf is an indicator.

Had neighbors that left their herd uncut, and un-sold for a few years, and the genetics started reaping the harvest... There were lots of dwarves over the fence. One crossing the fence into mine would have been a death sentence.

Could it have been bred to a "lowline" bull?

Yep, Angus bulls, in general, throw small calves.

prolly why i havent seen one, between both my uncles having small herds(around 100 pairs give or take 20 plus the bulls) and the fact they bring in new blood regular enough i havent seen many genetic defects personally....actually only one i can think of is a 2 headed one born on a friends ranch and thats not genetic but developmental...

We raise beef cattle. I've been saying for years that small live calves are better than big dead ones any day. Big dead ones are hard to sell and they attract predators. By the way, our worst predator on newborn calves are the black headed buzzards. They will attack a live new calf in preference to a dead one. The red headed turkey buzzard isn't as bad.

I've seen quite a few birth defects on large dairy farms. I have to wonder if some are caused by massive antibiotic and/or hormone injections.

granted ive never been around a dairy operation, only beef but would guess they use more pure breds than most beef raisers which means a higher incidence of bad genes circulating around....while some guys up here are nuts about pure breds most are like Sam's outfit where they run lots of crosses.....makes recessive genetic anomalies less likely....far from impossible but less likely....also like i said part of the reason ive never seen one is likely due to the small sizes of the herds ive been around....none of my family have big operations so low numbers combined with regular injections of new blood and chances of seeing defects arent that great....im sure even with new blood if any of them ran 1000 head operations i would have prolly seen something odd....simple numbers game...

Lots of interesting comments.

This rancher runs a stock cow herd of about 250 cows & heifers and has been in the business many years. He is quite fussy about his bulls and there is little or no inbreeding. This heifer was bred to a new bull on the ranch this year in a pasture away from older cows.

In talking to his foreman the other day he said that this is the smallest calf he has ever seen and he has been there about 25 years so he has seen many, many calves. Every thing about the calf looks in proportion, it is just much smaller than normal. It will be interesting to see how it grows between now and next fall when the calves are weaned.

Interesting about the buzzards. We see a lot of bald eagles and a few golden eagles around here this time of the year but they are after the afterbirths. There was one perched on a post in the corral the other day when we were out there waiting for a cow to clean after giving birth to a calf. They never seem to bother the calves any.

Maybe the mother was born to a bred heifer and had a low birth weight father. Then she is bred with another low birth weight bull and has mini-me for a calf.

But I'm not a geneticist and don't even know if that's possible.


We've kept replacement heifers from 2-year olds and never had any super dinks so that theory might be off.


I'm with Hastings, a little live calf(especially with bred heifers) is better than a big dead one. Or even a big live one that is all dopey from a tough birth.

Relative to beef genetics, there is a lot of "line breeding" and "in-breeding" in dairy, especially in the non-Holsteins.

Off topic, but all of our "turkey" buzzards have disappeared about 2 years ago. All are black headed buzzards, WHY??

I'd call him "Bearbait", or Sue.