Angus "adopts" an orphan black baldy

[Laurie J]

We sold an Angus heifer to my father-in-law last summer, and this summer she had her first calf the end of June. A nice little bull calf. A few weeks later one of his old Herefords died, leaving an 9 week old black baldy bull calf without a mama. The calf was eating pasture well, so he thought he'd just keep an eye on him. One morning, however, he went out to check on the cattle and found our Angus cow with her own bull calf nursing on one side, and the orphan black baldy happily eating on the other! She's adopted the orphan as her own, and both bull calves (now steers) are fat and sassy, and mom is happy as a clam with lots of milk! My only experience with livestock accepting an extra has been with not-too-successful sheep grafting, so we were very pleased the Angus accepted another calf without any prompting! Anyone else know if this is common?

[Yldrosie]

We used to have an old holstein who would adopt any thing. One dry summer, we had lots of dogies, and she raised about 20 of them. Great cow.

[wolffeathers]

A gentleman locally buys dairy cows and grafts dairy calves onto them to raise for local grass-fed beef. Glad it all worked out!

[tinknal]

Angus are great babysitters. Often you will see one cow with a dozen young calves while the rest are out grazing.

[Cheribelle]

I had a heifer that calved easily, the 2 were in a pen with a bottle calf that had been weaned for weeks. Well, he decided he wasn't so weaned, and Molly let him nurse right along with her own calf. Sold her to a friend, who says she raises the nicest calves every year. Must have lots of milk.

[tallpines]

Originally Posted by Yldrosie

We used to have an old holstein who would adopt any thing. .

Seems we always had a couple of them.
DH called them the "ol' Gramma" cows.
They always wanted to take care of all the babies.

[FEF]

Originally Posted by Laurie J

We sold an Angus heifer to my father-in-law last summer, and this summer she had her first calf the end of June. A nice little bull calf. A few weeks later one of his old Herefords died, leaving an 9 week old black baldy bull calf without a mama. The calf was eating pasture well, so he thought he'd just keep an eye on him. One morning, however, he went out to check on the cattle and found our Angus cow with her own bull calf nursing on one side, and the orphan black baldy happily eating on the other! She's adopted the orphan as her own, and both bull calves (now steers) are fat and sassy, and mom is happy as a clam with lots of milk! My only experience with livestock accepting an extra has been with not-too-successful sheep grafting, so we were very pleased the Angus accepted another calf without any prompting! Anyone else know if this is common?

You don't say if this is a purebred Angus heifer, but from my experience with registered Angus, I'd say don't count on one of them willingly nursing another's calf. Our heifers will sometimes allow a second calf to nurse, but all of our mature cows would kick the snot out of calves that weren't theirs. That was ok with us because we reported weights to the Angus Assn and wanted to know which cow was raising heavier calves. If a cow was nursing more than one calf or a calf nursing more than one cow, that data wasn't very reliable.

We had some calves, mostly bull calves, that seemed to make a game out of stealing milk from young cows. They would be getting all they needed from their momma, but just didn't seem to be able to resist stealing a bite now and then.

Angus are good mommas and you'll usually see one guarding the "calf nest" while the rest are grazing, but when it comes feeding time ours only wanted to feed their own.

[ladycat]

We had a "pet" Angus cow for years that we had bottle raised, named Blackie (real original, I know). She was real good about adopting calves.