Approaches to the out of hours calving; When, what, how and why?

Calvings often occur overnight and can be a high stakes and high pressure case for the out of hours farm vet. Unfortunately there is no prescribed way to approach every calving and individual variations in patients, farms and situations will all play a role in how the practitioner will attend to these emergencies.
This talk will discuss a decision making process and focus on a general approach to calvings. It is by no means intended to be a standard operating protocol for cattle dystocia! It is intended that the topic will stimulate discussion and questions from the audience to equip all of us with the tools we need to approach these cases.
We will consider the decision making process when presented with a calving out of hours, talk about approaches to dystocia as well as some common aetiologies.

• Understand when we need to make decisions or change our approach to calvings
• Understand what options we have to get the best outcomes
• Understand how we can alter our approach as the need arises
• Understand why problems may have occurred and how we can manage client expectations.