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Orphaned calf

saraha

By saraha,
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saraha

saraha

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So the kids called me at work to tell me fil showed up with an orphaned calf! He’s about 10 days old and I’m off the buy a bottle and milk replacer because fil can’t find his. Wish us luck, I guess he  lost his momma yesterday sometime and looks like he spent all night until early this afternoon in the mud poor guy. The kids are already naming him Jenkins even though I keep saying he may not make it through the night 🙄

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saraha

saraha

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Thanks, so far we’ve only been able to get him to drink about a pint of milk. Dd is snuggled up with him and the cats, who all keep taking turns sitting on him, out in the barn while I took the rest to guitar. Then she’ll swap out with a different sister

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fairfarmhand

fairfarmhand

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Just now, saraha said:

Thanks, so far we’ve only been able to get him to drink about a pint of milk. Dd is snuggled up with him and the cats, who all keep taking turns sitting on him, out in the barn while I took the rest to guitar. Then she’ll swap out with a different sister

Do you know how to put a tube in his throat?

 

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Drama Llama

Drama Llama

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How sweet.

Why would you need milk replacer though?  Would the milk at the grocery store be formulated perfectly for baby calves?  

As always, in any conversation about animals (I'm clueless about animals), I'm probably missing some key piece of information and will feel really stupid when you answer. 

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Faith-manor

Faith-manor

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I do not know a thing about bottle fed calves. But we fed bum lambs, that is the kind of thing that will melt your heart! If we found them alone in the cold, we put them in a warm bath which really helped get their core temperature up, and then the rigorous drying off helped them not be so lethargic so they took their first bottle better. 

Of course, I had zero clue if that would work or not. But I thought I would throw it out there because baby farm stock are so darn cute, and it is so sad to lose them.

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fairfarmhand

fairfarmhand

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1 minute ago, BandH said:

How sweet.

Why would you need milk replacer though?  Would the milk at the grocery store be formulated perfectly for baby calves?  

As always, in any conversation about animals (I'm clueless about animals), I'm probably missing some key piece of information and will feel really stupid when you answer. 

Too expensive. Calves need about a gallon a day

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saraha

saraha

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Just now, fairfarmhand said:

Do you know how to put a tube in his throat?

 

I have never done it and would have to call around and see if we can find someone with the soft rubber tube. While I was at work I called the neighbor who raises commercial milk cows and told him the situation. He was basically thinking along the same lines I am that he’s not going to make it. He said give him a shot of whiskey in his bottle and see if you can get a raw egg down his throat. I put a shot in his bottle but he doesn’t want to drink it.

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Drama Llama

Drama Llama

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1 minute ago, fairfarmhand said:

Too expensive. Calves need about a gallon a day

My sum total of experience with milk replacers is baby formula which is way more expensive than milk.  I just assumed that was always true.  

My teens come close to drinking a gallon a day.  Can I feed them this milk replacer?  

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saraha

saraha

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6 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:

I do not know a thing about bottle fed calves. But we fed bum lambs, that is the kind of thing that will melt your heart! If we found them alone in the cold, we put them in a warm bath which really helped get their core temperature up, and then the rigorous drying off helped them not be so lethargic so they took their first bottle better. 

Of course, I had zero clue if that would work or not. But I thought I would throw it out there because baby farm stock are so darn cute, and it is so sad to lose them.

Yeah he’s being intermittently vigorously rubbed and resting. He’s too big to fit in the bathtub!

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fairfarmhand

fairfarmhand

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10 minutes ago, saraha said:

I have never done it and would have to call around and see if we can find someone with the soft rubber tube. While I was at work I called the neighbor who raises commercial milk cows and told him the situation. He was basically thinking along the same lines I am that he’s not going to make it. He said give him a shot of whiskey in his bottle and see if you can get a raw egg down his throat. I put a shot in his bottle but he doesn’t want to drink it.

Our tractor supply and feed store has them.

9 minutes ago, BandH said:

My sum total of experience with milk replacers is baby formula which is way more expensive than milk.  I just assumed that was always true.  

My teens come close to drinking a gallon a day.  Can I feed them this milk replacer?  

 

9 minutes ago, saraha said:

He gets cow baby formula! 😁

You don’t wanna. It’s NASTY stuff. Smells terrible, Iike nutramigen baby formula 

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Sharpie

Sharpie

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I haven't read through the replies...made it to the "too cold" one.  I have plenty of experience with hypothermia calves.  If you have a thermometer, a bathtub, you can put it in hot water....normal temps of a calf are 101.5 to 102.  You want the water hotter than that.  It takes TIME to warm them up and you keep checking but it's the best way I've found.  Newborn calves don't regulate temps super great but I think you thought he's over a week old. 

I can walk you through tubing a calf if you can find a tuber.  I'll try to check back often. 

If you know it got colostrum, you may be able to save it.  Lots of luck to you!  Bottle babies are WORK!!

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Sharpie

Sharpie

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If you want to save it, you've gotta get the core temp up to normal.  A human thermometer will work.  It'll crash & burn fast if you can't get it warmed up.  You can try to put milk replacer by tubing it but it may just sit there as its guts are too cold to work.  I've done blood transfusions too but that's typically because I'm also fighting failure of passive transfer. 

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saraha

saraha

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Dd said fil said he’s 10 days old. Dh will get home from work soon and assess the situation. We aren’t above bringing him in the house but he’s too big to fit in our tub. Fil didn’t say what killed the mother but they were an established pair 

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Sharpie

Sharpie

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If he's too big for the tub, you can try a heat lamp. I've just found the absolute best way to get a hypothermic baby warmed up is hot water.  Having a big calf in the house isn't super easy either.  Depending on what killed momma, may be affecting baby too.  Big hugs!  We start calving season too and my heart goes out to you.  I've fought tooth and nail with plenty of sleepless nights trying to save a calf. 

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saraha

saraha

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They are pastured pairs amd when they didn’t show up for feeding he went looking for them. Found them after lunch amd he could tell momma had been gone since at least last night. He brought the calf up and apparently took it straight to our house.

Dd is snuggled up with his dirty stinky self in the barn with a blanket til dh gets home. She is not shy and when I left was curled around him listening to a podcast 😆

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BusyMom5

BusyMom5

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Once I had a calf that I was sure wouldn't make it.   I read he needed electrolytes,  but all I had was Gatorade.  So- Gatorade,  an egg (fresh from chickens), and some powdered formula.  Every 2 hours all night long.  I gave up around 4am, and he was alive at 8, and able to hold his head up.  He had been so weak it took 3 of us to feed him all through the night- one to hold his body, one for his neck/ head, and me trying to work the bottle enough to get a little down his throat.  We gave him a few shots from the vet- can't remember exactly what, maybe Vit K?  Anyway,  he did make it!  Hope your little one makes it.  Bottle calves are too much work!  We've had several over the years.   

Will he suck?  Often times if you can just get a little into them, they perk up a bit in about an hour and will drink.  I wouldn't use the tube unless he just cannot suck at all.  

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saraha

saraha

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Not a good one. We made him a bed on a tarp in the mud room where it is nice and warm and dh moved him in when he got home. He wouldn’t drink anything but up til about 20 minutes ago he was resting his head in dd’s lap while ds played the guitar and sang to him, so if he moves on he will have been cared for and warm. If he doesn’t I might come downstairs in the morning to him hanging out in the kitchen!

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Faith-manor

Faith-manor

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14 minutes ago, saraha said:

Not a good one. We made him a bed on a tarp in the mud room where it is nice and warm and dh moved him in when he got home. He wouldn’t drink anything but up til about 20 minutes ago he was resting his head in dd’s lap while ds played the guitar and sang to him, so if he moves on he will have been cared for and warm. If he doesn’t I might come downstairs in the morning to him hanging out in the kitchen!

Oh boy! Well, I favor finding him wandering around the house by morn, but the not drinking is tough, really tough. 

We had a pen made up in our living room next to the fireplace for the bum lambs so they would be cozy. The first time we had a lamb, we underestimated its ability to escape - and to be fair, our teenage dd put it together and honestly did not think it needed to be at all fullproof. We got up in the morning to find out after the 3 am feeding, the little imp was out, curled up so close to the fireplace we could smell singed wool! That one also thought Dd was his mother and took to making a racket when separated from her, so we ended up diapering the little man so he could sleep in her room.

Poor Jenkins. 😥

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Tenaj

Tenaj

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This brings back so many memories for me.  I grew up on a farm without animals but my uncle raised pigs and my grandma taught me how to care for the runts that were in trouble as soon as I was old enough to be trustworthy.  My patient mom would let me keep them under a heating lamp in our laundry room and I would bottle-feed them every two hours and mom would take over when I was at school.  Lots of heartbreak when we lost little ones.  My favorite was a success story named Wilbur who would wait in our front yard for me to get off the school bus.  He was more dog than pig 🙂

Thinking of your orphan and praying for success.

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Faith-manor

Faith-manor

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2 minutes ago, fairfarmhand said:

AND THIS IS WHY I HATE BOTTLE CALVES! ALL THE WORK ALL THE STRESS AND THEY DIE!!!!!

Same with lambs. I had such a love hate relationship. When they live, they are do much fun, so much satisfaction. When they die, it is just brutal, like your own pet dog or cat dying. 

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prairiewindmomma

prairiewindmomma

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Two things:

1. I'm sorry that got dumped on you yesterday, and that the calf didn't make it.

2. Honestly, I'm kinda pissed at your FIL today.  I've been thinking for a while that perhaps FIL was just a bit clueless about your MIL, and willing to be bossed around by SIL because caring for others is kind of an "inside" task--something traditionally done by women. I wasn't surprised he dropped off a bottle calf yesterday.  Farming life is hard, and bottle calves (and animal death) are just part of farming. It's normal that farm kids end up with a bottle calf or three every year if you run a herd of any size. But the fact that he dropped off a hypothermic calf yesterday some place without a rectal thermometer, to a place without a warming box or equivalent (we had a little shed with a wood stove just off of the barn) and he runs a feed lot? That tells me something about his character. I don't hold the average family on 20 acres with a head or five of cattle and a day job in town to those standards, but I sure as heck hold people who run cattle for a living to higher ones.  

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saraha

saraha

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If it helps you be less mad, he has 50 cows raised on pasture. That’s why the calf got so sick, he and his mama came up to get feed the evening before but didn’t show up for morning feeding so he went to look for them. It took a long time to find them as his land is Appalachia hilly but he did go out straight away to find them. The last time he had a bottle calf was four years ago.

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prairiewindmomma

prairiewindmomma

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27 minutes ago, saraha said:

If it helps you be less mad, he has 50 cows raised on pasture. That’s why the calf got so sick, he and his mama came up to get feed the evening before but didn’t show up for morning feeding so he went to look for them. It took a long time to find them as his land is Appalachia hilly but he did go out straight away to find them. The last time he had a bottle calf was four years ago.

A hypothermic calf is an emergency. Dumping an emergency off to people who aren’t capable of handling it (having the knowledge and tools) and letting it be their problem isn’t cool. If this was a regular emergency you regularly took on, fine, but dumping an emergency on you without you being equipped to handle it isn’t good farming or good people-Ing. If it was out overnight in the mud, he needed to temp check it and make sure it was stable and give it an initial bottle and hand off a stable calf to you…not  dump a crisis.

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Tenaj

Tenaj

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10 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:

A hypothermic calf is an emergency. Dumping an emergency off to people who aren’t capable of handling it (having the knowledge and tools) and letting it be their problem isn’t cool. If this was a regular emergency you regularly took on, fine, but dumping an emergency on you without you being equipped to handle it isn’t good farming or good people-Ing. If it was out overnight in the mud, he needed to temp check it and make sure it was stable and give it an initial bottle and hand off a stable calf to you…not  dump a crisis.

But he also is the main caretaker of his wife who has dementia and other physical ailments right now.  Maybe he was just doing the best he could at that moment.

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Faith-manor

Faith-manor

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7 minutes ago, Tenaj said:

But he also is the main caretaker of his wife who has dementia and other physical ailments right now.  Maybe he was just doing the best he could at that moment.

I am willing to give him a little grace here. His wife is super ill with C diff and dementia, and my guess is he was feeling a bit desperate. We all exhibit human frailty at times. I am far more judgmental of him refusing to see reality about his wife and the level of care she needs.

One thing is for sure, if he had nowhere else to take that calf, it would have laid outside and died. He could not have cared for it and his wife, not to mention that he also had to see to the disposal of the cow's body because he couldn't just leave the mother's corpse laying around. Health code/safety takes precedence. It is just so unfortunate how it played out. Ideally, he should be retiring from the farm work while caring for his wife, but most of us never get the privilege of ideal situations.

Rough all around. I give OP's Dd props for trying and showing Jenkins tenderness until he passed. Baby livestock tug heartstrings.

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