About a month ago we got some cattle from one of the farms we deal with every year. His cattle are always excellent and totally grass fed. Big fat red ones that get along well together and treat their calves well.
I called to see what he had any lined up that wouldn’t have their calves or had lost a calf and thus were about to lose their jobs. He said he had one, then he called a bit later and said there would be two. A day or two later he called and said he said there might be three. One cow had a calf that was doing very poorly and he didn’t know the calf was going to make it or not.
He asked if I would be willing to take the calf and see if I could help it. The cow would wind up being mine one way or another. The cow had had trouble with last year’s calf also so she wasn’t a good employee and had to go. I was to get the cow and the calf. If I could figure the calf out it would go back to the farmer or be sent to town. If the calf died, at least the farmer wouldn’t have to witness it. I would wind up with the cow one way or the other. Whatever happened to the calf would be OK as far as the farmer was concerned. I was pretty sure he thought the calf would be dead in a day or so.
He didn’t say so but I think he wanted to get the cow and her calf out of there so that he didn’t have to see the calf die. Plus he was coming to my place with the other two cows already and there was plenty of room for one more and a little calf.
Calves are NOT cheap so if the calf was at all viable it would be worth saving. Baby calves who have had colostrum are going for about a thousand dollars and sometimes more these days.
The trailer arrived and the cattle came off. The calf trotted off the trailer just fine. Went out in the pasture and laid down. Didn’t look all perky like most calves do but didn’t look like it was sick either.
The cow had a plump full udder so I couldn’t tell right away what the problem was.
I watched them in the pasture a bit. The cow spent the customary time shoving with the other cattle who were already there figuring out who was boss. After that was done, she went out to the calf and checked on it. The calf would suck but never for more than a few seconds. The cow was very attentive to it. She licked it and took good care of it. Knew right where it was all of the time. If I got between her and the calf she would get real alert and come over to make sure I didn’t bother the calf.
The calf spent a lot of time lying down. The cow would come over and get it up and it would suck again for a few seconds and then give up. The udder always looked like it was full but the teats were never full.
This went on for about 24 hours and the calf was getting more and more draggy. The calf had a dry navel so I figured it was more than a few days old. I decided that the calf had probably never gotten any milk from it’s mama. For one reason or another, the mama was just not producing any milk. Cows get something called mastitis that makes their udder feel like a leather bag with a rock in it. No milk comes out of that. Most of the time it is just one or two of the teats that get mastitis because the calf doesn’t suck on more than one teat. That happens with cows that produce too much milk. Maybe what happened was last time this cow had a calf it died and she got mastitis on all four quarters (cows have 4 teats) and that ruined her udder for this calf.
No milk is a very bad thing for a baby calf and not only because it will starve to death in about a week. The first meal from the mama is full of colostrum. Colostrum is the first milk from a mother to it’s baby. Colostrum includes a LOT of antibodies that cannot be passed from the mother to the baby in the womb. In short, if the calf doesn’t get the colostrum in the first 24 hours of life, it has a compromised immune system and has a much higher chance of getting sick later in life.
Colostrum can be purchased from a veterinarian or from most farm stores but it has to be gotten to the calf within 24 hours or the calf’s system progresses without the colostrum and won’t let the antibodies into the calf’s system. This calf was too late for colostrum.
I wanted at least to give it a try. It might die but at least it wouldn’t starve to death as it was doing at that time. I went to our closest farm store and got a bottle with the right sized nipple, some milk replacer and some calf starter grain. This cost about 100 bucks.
When I got home, the calf was lying down and didn’t care to get up when came near it with the warm newly mixed up milk replacer. If a calf is doing well and is more than a day or two old, it will jump up when a person comes near. It might not run away but it will get onto its feet so that it can run away if necessary. This little guy was not doing very well at all.
I stuck the nipple in his mouth. He laid there and sucked the bottle contents down in no time flat. Two quarters of warm milk in about 30 seconds. It always amazes me how quickly they can drink that bottle down. So far so good. At least he had some nutrition.
The directions on the milk replacer bag said to feed him the two quarts twice per day. That afternoon, I gave him another bottle. He got up when I came near that time.
The next morning, another feeding. He was definitely doing better and more perky. I started calling him Rusty and hollering for him when I came close to the pasture he and his mama were in. It didn’t take long before he was hollering back so I could find him easily. He would come over to get fed but he didn’t become attached to me like most bottle fed calves do. His mama was still taking care of him to the extent she could.
It took about a day and a half before he pooped at all. His poop didn’t look natural but at least I could now tell that his gut was doing something besides just laying there and dying. Normal calf poop when they are getting only their mama’s milk looks kind of like butterscotch pudding. We had a dog once that would go out in the pasture and eat the calf poop. Pa said that was because it was so full of protein. Who knows, maybe it even tasted like butterscotch pudding.
Then he got scours, in a calf this is what diarrhea. His progress slowed way down and then he started to go downhill again. Kind of lethargic, still got up and came to be fed but I could tell he was getting more and more draggy and lethargic.
I was pretty sure his lack of colostrum was the root of his problem. I went to see the vet and got some electrolytes because the main thing diarrhea does is sap the fluids out of a body. I also got some yogurt as a probiotic. I had heard somewhere that any kind of probiotic might help and I knew that yogurt was a probiotic. Back in the day they used the lining of a calf’s stomach to get cheese started so it was worth a try. I mixed some kefir in one feeding but it seemed that he didn’t like strawberry kefir. I mixed some plain yogurt with some sugar in his next feeding and he most definitely liked that.
He improved rapidly after that. His poop firmed up a bit and got whitish but never got to the butterscotch pudding. Then it got a little bit of green in it and that green-ness got stronger over the next few days. After a few days I noticed him eating grass. This was a VERY good sign.
Eating grass is a sign that his rumen (one of his 4 stomachs) has been activated. He was watching his mama and eating what she did. He was still kind of skinny but he was most definitely doing better. Was getting more and more hungry at each feeding so I started giving three quarts per feeding.
At that point I knew he had to go. He was pretty much out of danger and had probably taught me all he could by that stage. I couldn’t keep him all year and over the next winter and up to the point where he would be big enough to become steaks. We are not set up to bottle feed a calf for longer than a short while. Now that he was out of danger, he could go to a farm that is set up to handle a bunch of calves.
His immune system is still compromised to some degree but some place that is set up to handle calves would be able to handle him if anybody can. I would not be putting a bad product out and screwing someone over if I sold him.
I would have liked to keep him but I would then have to pay about a thousand bucks to the farmer he came from and then come up with a totally new and different infrastructure to take care of the calf who has a compromised immune system and whose mama couldn’t feed it. In short, he wouldn’t fit here as an employee.
The night before the truck was scheduled to come, it took me about 40 minutes to catch him. He came over to get his milk but when I tried to put the rope around his neck he moved at exactly the wrong time and wasn’t caught. He was leery of me after that and I followed him all around the pasture trying to get him to take the rest of his milk. Finally he did deign to come get some more milk and was caught and put in the corral with his mama chewing her cud and talking to him through the bars.
The truck came early the next morning and he was loaded and is gone.
The next one I write will have a happy ending, I swear!
No worries.
SV
Maybe call Dr Pol