# Confirming pregnancy with a stethoscope...



## Cat (Jun 19, 2004)

Have any of y'all confirmed pregnancy with a stethoscope by checking for that second heartbeat? Molly could be up to 130-140 days bred (don't have my planner handy at the moment) and I've been planning on doing Biotracking but I just haven't gotten to it. Of course if I could borrow a doppler off the truck...ha ha ha! Anyway, I didn't think of it before but why couldn't I use a stethoscope to check for a heartbeat? I assume that, like humans, the calves heart beat would be significantly faster than Molly's. I'm going to have to google it. Placement would be the key, methinks...


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## Ronney (Nov 26, 2004)

Cat, while on the surface it may seem to be a logical way of doing things, I doubt that it's that easy - otherwise nobody would have invented ultrascan or you wouldn't have vets standing up to their arm pits doing pregnancy testing. Have you ever put your ear against a cow's stomach? The rumen can be an incredibly noisy place and you would be hard pushed to hear a heartbeat above the rumbling, grumbling and squishing that goes on in there, even assuming you knew which way the calf was lieing - and I guess calves will move around in the same way human babies can so where it was yesterday is not necessarily where it is today.

Cheers,
Ronnie


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## kclementsdvm (Feb 5, 2008)

Cat said:


> Have any of y'all confirmed pregnancy with a stethoscope by checking for that second heartbeat? Molly could be up to 130-140 days bred (don't have my planner handy at the moment) and I've been planning on doing Biotracking but I just haven't gotten to it. Of course if I could borrow a doppler off the truck...ha ha ha! Anyway, I didn't think of it before but why couldn't I use a stethoscope to check for a heartbeat? I assume that, like humans, the calves heart beat would be significantly faster than Molly's. I'm going to have to google it. Placement would be the key, methinks...


Nice idea - good luck with that.  Seriously, though, it works in humans because the baby is so close to the mom's skin and there's hardly anything in the way. Won't work with the cow - there's a lot in the way, plus a lot of normal noises to pick up from mom.


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