Pantywaste calf

[jode]

I have a little bull calf that I bought as a weekold bottle calf on May 29, 2009. He was supposedly 1/2 angus, 1/4 holstein and 1/4 hereford. He is mostly black now with a few very small white spots and he gets a brownish winter overcoat. The seller is a reputable middle-woman who I believe would tell me the truth. She told me the information above about this calf's heritage, but it is possible she was lied to.

The Meat:
This calf is just about the most worthless looking calf I have ever seen. I never did castrate him when I got him because I wanted to wait until he looked good and healthy to do it to avoid any stress (and out of sheer laziness) so he is still a bull but he is seriously just a waste of cow-flesh. He has a HUGE fat belly, he is skin and bones skinny, he has a skinny-bullet-butt and he refuses to put on any weight.

I have a little longhorn calf that was born on September 22, 2009 who is noticeably larger and who has awesome muscle tone and mass. Why is a 8-mo old "worthless" longhorn so much meatier than a yearling 1/2 angus? I mean, am I wrong to be wondering if there is something else seriously wrong with this little calf? Or does bottle feeding a calf really affect their longterm health/gains so detrimentally?

[gone-a-milkin]

How often have you wormed him?

[jode]

I wormed them both a few months ago when I turned them out onto the spring pasture. I don't know if I ever wormed him prior to that and I know I hadn't ever wormed the little longhorn prior to that. Used Ivermax

[Callieslamb]

I have had great results with bottle feeding and I had one disaster. using high-fat, real milk ( not soy) milk replacer helps. I'd worm him again. I got a calf that had been rescued from his owner this Jan. He was a pot-bellied little thing, though about months old. He got rounder and rounder and his tail end got thinner and thinner. So I decided to worm him. It took a couple weeks, but finally, finally he started growing. Now he's okay. He's a jersey.

[Cliff]

He's probably more susceptible to worms than the longhorn.
Btw longhorns make great meat and do well on just pasture, so your youngster is not worthless. People are just prejudiced towards "black" cows.

[deineria]

If he has a fat belly and is skin and bones otherwise, it almost has to be a heavy worm load. Get Cydectin and use that. . .

[jode]

Here's some photos I just took to emphasize this point and for your viewing pleasure. The longhorn is the white spotted one and the angus mix is the black one (obviously.)





This is the pair of them together for size comparison (take a look at the huge difference in rump between them - the little longhorn is massive):



And one more for bragging rights cause I really like the way this young bull is turning out:


Hoping to have a few calves on the ground out this ol' boy within a few months....

[lasergrl]

He looks very dairy, If I saw him at a sale I would think holstein more then anything.

[jode]

He certainly does have a very dairy head shape and the bullet butt doesn't help to dispel that notion. I am willing to accept that fact that he may be half dairy, but I would expect even a dairy cow to have grown a hair more than this.
Holsteins are a very large cow and this is decidedly not a very large calf. He does have a lot of resemblance to our 2 year old jersey steer - except that he is so small. Even the notoriously small jersey towers over this little wimp.

Thanks to all the advice, I guess I will worm him again. Maybe I miscalculated his weight when I administered it to him a few months back and shorted him. I probably dosed him at 300 pounds

[lasergrl]

I would have guessed 1/2 jersey 1/2 hol, but for his head, not very jersey like. His body condition is exact to the jersey hol crosses I sold to a guy down the road a last spring. He still has them and they look just like him except they have spots.

[tinknal]

I think the "Angus" was really a Jersey. If so he looks normal to me.

[Allen W]

Did he scour or have pnemonia when he was small? He looks loke a poor doer to me.

[randiliana]

I'd have to say, with those horns, he isn't likely 1/2 angus....

[jode]

No illnesses as a youngster. He does look a lot like our jersey steer in the face. He is just blacker. I would hate to learn that he is actually 1/2 jersey and half Holstein. I don't know a lot about what a young angus looks like, but like I said, he looks exactly like our jersey steer except he is smaller and blacker.

[lasergrl]

ahh, yes. If he was half angus, he'd be polled.

[agmantoo]

The angus is not there. Look at the ears, that is a Brahma influence. I do not know what you plan to do with him but if he was here he would have to go.

[jode]

Got some dude coming to pay for him tomorrow. Put him on CL for $250

[HillsideWayCSA]

Brahma is the first thought that came to my mind. But I'm not a cow person so go figure. The down side about genetics is it's a gamble when you start mixing breeds. Ya know? Sure for the most part it's very reliable for conformation, build, growth, etc but there are always throwbacks and that momma holstein might have just had very dominate genes or some other hidden lineage behind her that the previous owner of the calf didn't know about. Who knows, the lady might have been giving you the knowledge that she thought was true and you might have just got a genetic fluke.

You have some really nice looking longhorns, by the way.

[willow_girl]

Is it possible he was a twin?

We had some twin heifers born on the farm where I work a couple months ago, and they still are t-i-n-y!

Farmer put a newborn bull calf in with them the other day, and I was, like,

[ufo_chris]

Just want to add...I have twin 1/2 angus bulls and they WERE growing horns!
Real horns the vet said when he removed them!
I also was told that should not be . The sire is registered black angus and was the only bull here!
My one twin was bottle fed (too weak to nurse) and he looked sorta like that for a while. But he filled out better after I put him outside. He's still alittle smaller than his brother though.