Calf won't eat

[Guinea mama]

We got a new calf a few days ago and now he will not drink from the bottle. He acts ok but he has no interest in drinking from the bottle, he has not drank anything from it since Tuesday night, he will drink water from the bucket and is still peeing ok. Any ideas on why he might be doing this or how to get him to eat again. He is only a week and a half old. Vet is coming today but do you guys have any suggestions?

[Gin64]

Some calves just wean off of the bottle faster than others. I would try putting his milk in the bucket and see if he will not drink it . Than if he doesn't drink I would try switching milk replacer. I had a jersey calf that would not take a bottle from day one. She wanted it in the bucket. We are now milking the little fool.

[topside1]

MaMa, I'm just assuming that your feeding the calf milk replacer. So how about heating up some store bought milk and give that a go. All milk replacers are not the same, far from the same in fact. Another test is feed some gatorade to the calf and see if it sucks....

[topside1]

One more thing, if you didn't pay around $60-$70 for 50# of milk replacer you didn't buy milk based. So the taste of the replacer may be your problem. Some folks will buy cheaper soy based powder and regret it...$60-$70 for a bag is outrageous but what can you do...I bag of replacer is equal to the price of a small bull calf.

[dosthouhavemilk]

Take away its water. It won't harm the calf to not have access to water 24/7.

Though I suppose the first question ought to have been...how old is this calf? If it is over a couple of months old it is probably weaning itself. If younger, he still needs milk.

[llamaqueen]

I would try putting his milk in the bucket. I would rather bucket feed anyways then bottle feed. If you still want to give him water, give it to him after his milk, but in a VERY small amount. Maybe he doesn't want to drink because when he starts to get hungry he is filling up on water before you get his bottle to him?

[Cheribelle]

I have found that if a baby does not get the colostrum it needs within a few hours of birth you may be fighting a losing battle. Been there done that, with more than one beautiful baby.
Try the bucket tho, take away the water.

[scorpian5]

if we cannot get a calf to drink out of the bottle we tube them. The calf will starve itself if you dont get it to drink. we have given the colostrum packages to calves many times and have had great sucess but if its more than 24 hours from birth it wont do any good. Where did you get the calf? The farmers around here give there sick calves the wonder drug Nuflor its expensive but seems to work

[Guinea mama]

Tried the bucket and he ate great, although we still gave him the selenim shot from the vet. If I had known it was something so simple I'd have switched him earlier and saved myself a lot of heartache. Thanks for your advice.