Stupid Calf, or ????

[ONThorsegirl]

We have an older Cow, she is about 12 she is half Limousin and Half Holstein. She is nice cow but more holstein than we would like, produces lots of milk, she has a very large udder now with age it seems to be worse. She also only has 3 quarters of her udder that are functionable. She got mastitis last year, in one teat, we had milked it all out and gave her 40cc's penicillin which normally does the trick, but in this case she lost the function.

She calved about 2 weeks ago. a nice bull calf. We noticed the calf isn't looking as thrifty as the others, it looks thin so we watched it for another day and noticed no change. So we intervened we gave it a bottle of milk replacer and he drank the 4 pints, we only were feeding once a day hoping it would get him some energy and suck from mom. We watched him, and he went back to mom, sucking on her ear, and her dewflap, anything that wasn't an udder, he didn't seem to know where to go.

We have now started feeding him as much as he will drink, this morning he drank 8 pints of milk, his belly was awfully full. I noticed last night though that when we went to feed him he walked straight to me and hit my legwith his head-just didn't care where he was going? blind? or was that a type of bunt thinking I would pop the bottle into his mouth?

He also has a creamy colour manure, which smells bad!
Melissa

[Up North]

It sounds like you have got yourself a bottle calf. I think you need to make a decision to either make him a 100% bottle fed calf or try and get him to drink off his mother. If possible lock them in a pen and keep an eye on them. If the calf is up and vigorous he will figure out where the milk is. We have a dairy herd and usually leave the calves on their mothers for a few days. Yes, we have had calves that are just flat out stupid. It's usually the really big bull calves too. They don't have any brains. Those ones we just bottle feed. As far as the stinky creamy manure. The little guy probably has scours from being overfed. 8 pints is way too much for one feeding. He should of gotten half of that for one feeding.

Heather

[ONThorsegirl]

Thanks,

He was only getting 4 pints at every feeding but this morning he was still hungry so we let him drink until he was full and that happened to be 8 pints.

He is probably going to end up comming to the barn, to be bottle fed. We would bring momma cow to the barn yard and keep them there but Momma Cow is one that will never stay in any fence, she will go over or under anything so that she isn't confined.


Melissa

[wr]

Generally it's not a good idea to let the calf decide when they are full because they aren't wired to know full. If you ever watch a cow, she decides when they've had enough and she'll walk away.