Hi, I’m Mike and this is our Wyoming Life.
Coming up on Our Wyoming life, We say goodbye to an old and good friend
Then I pretend I’m a cow and we learn exactly what goes into raising a bottle calf
And later, a calf is found in the pasture down and near death
Every year we lose cows, its inevitable.
But some cows we lose hit a little harder than others.
This week we lost our very first cow that I calved here on the ranch when we left our
corporate jobs to come back and help out.
Indulge me as we take a moment to say goodbye to number 1
We get requests every year from someone who will want to know if we end up with a bottle
calf, will we sell it to them to raise on their own.
Whether they want to start their own herd or they are just looking for a cow to raise
for beef.
We will usually sell a bottle calf, but not before fair warning.
Raising a calf is a lot of work.
You have to take the place of that cows mom, you have to feed them, clean them, make sure
they are warm, healthy and happy.
One of the most important things you have to do, is teach them how to cow.
Teaching a calf how to cow is hard, and the best way for them to learn how be a cow is
to get them around other cows.
We still have Bambi and Princess Bliss along with 80 and Gunther here in the corral and
they are going to help me teach Cupcake how to be a cow.
This is Cupcake, her mom had twins and because she was the first twin born, her mom didn’t
even know she was there and she was left for dead.
I found her lying in the field all alone and brought her in the barn where she has been
ever since.
Unfortunately we can’t keep Cupcake and raise her as a breeding cow, because she was
a twin and the other twin was a bull or boy calf, there is a 90% chance that she is infertile.
In most cattle twins, the blood vessels in the placenta are interconnected, creating
a shared circulation for both twins, male hormones pass from the male to the female,
and cause an underdeveloped reproductive system in the female.
So Cupcake will be going to auction, and because we don’t have another cow that has lost
a calf to try to graft her on to, she is our responsibility.
An the first thing she needs is food.
Calves need to eat, and they eat a bunch, hopefully your calf will have had colustrom
at birth from its mom, but if it didn’t then you have to take special measures to
make sure your calf gets all the antibodies and initial nutrients it needs.
If you think or know it didn’t get colustrom then you will need to feed it colostrum supplement
for the first week or so of its life.
Cupcake is a couple of weeks old now so she gets milk replacer, a powdered milk that we
get from the feed store.
Its mixed with water and put into this 2 quart bottle.
She will drink between 4 to 6 of these bottles a day, depending on her mood.
And yes, calves, like kids can be moody.
Shes in a stall in the barn, and hungry so we get her bottle to her, and after some work
she figures out what to do with it, and she mellows out a little bit.
A hungry calf can be a nuisance, especially when they figure out that you are the provider
of the food.
This head butting action that she is doing is an instinctual thing that she would do
to her mom, headbutting her moms udder in order to get the milk to drop down into the
teats for drinking.
She doesn’t realize that headbutting me or the bottle will not make the milk flow
faster, but she tries.
When she gets a bit bigger I will actually start feeding her from outside the fence,
keeping the fence between her and me, the reason is simple.
When she gets a bit taller, the headbutting can make for a uncomfortable situation, expecially
if you are guy.
If ya get my testicular crushing hint.
Heres another suggestion, when you get done feeding, run.
If you stay in the corral or stall, shes not going to leave you alone.
A calf is never full and yes they are adorable, exciting and fun, but they are still a lot
of work and they are stronger than they look.
Milk is also a laxative.
I bring that up for two reasons.
First, its important to keep a calfs living area clean, scooping out the poop will be
healthier for the calf and cleaner for both you and her.
Keep an eye out for diarrhea though, that can be a sign of scours, it will cause a calf
to dehydrate and eventually die, it is treatable but can be prevented by keeping her stall
clean and dry.
Second, I am now Cupcakes mom, doing all the motherly duties.
Except one, I wont lick her clean.
For some reason, calves don’t know to get their tail out of the way of their poop.
I guess that’s a learned behavior so we have to wash her rear end.
The poop can harden and can actually plug her up.
He mom would lick it off, we will use a bucket and water.
Shes fed, she clean and happy.
Now she gets to do something she hasn’t gotten the chance to do yet, in her entire
life.
She’s going to be going and playing with other cows and calves.
This is where she learns to be a cow, something I could never teach her.
By no means is this everything you need to know about bottle raising a calf, but it gives
you an idea how much work can go into it and also how rewarding it can be.
Calving continues and just because the weather has been nice doesn’t mean we still don’t
have to look out for calves in trouble.
Everytime I check cows, Im looking for a number of things, first and foremost, new calves,
making sure their mom dries them off and gets them up to suck.
Also, I’m checking on all the calves that are already born.
Calves will sleep and sleep hard, and they probably hate me, but I make sure everyone
is alive and ok, but when you roll up to calf who is down and out, you scoop them up and
away you go.
Back to the shop, where our assessment begins.
This calf is cold and hypothermic so the first thing we do is get some warm milk in its belly,
then it’s a shot of vitamins and antibiotics to give it a little boost.
After all that she goes in the warmer.
After we get its body temp up to normal range we can weigh her.
Shes light, about 50 lbs but that’s ok, her mom is a good mom and if we can get her
back to health she should be able to take care of her.
As we continue our evaluation of the calf, we can begin to understand why she was down
in the field.
She cant stand up on her own.
This could be a sign that she had a stressful birth or she could have been stepped on but
as you can tell her back legs are not able to support her weight.
After letting her rest for a bit, I give her some more milk, tubing her again as she is
still too weak to drink from a bottle.
Then she goes into the barn to a stall with Cupcake overnight.
The next morning, heading into the barn to check on our patient and we find her and Cupcake.
And the good news is that shes up and moving, Shes still really wobbly but shes up and that’s
all that counts.
Shes hungry too, so I feed her some bottle and then take her back out to her mom, where
she can take over and I can go check cows again.
The cycle repeats itself, over and over.
And sometimes it has a happy ending and sometimes it doesn’t . This week went from horribly
heartbreaking to making it all worth it in only a matter of one black fuzzball of a calf.
Sometimes that’s all it takes, that one thing to make you smile and appreciate all
you have.
Take the good with the bad, they both make you who you are.
That’s it for this episode.
Next week, its baby chicken.
We raise between 25-50 chickens all for their eggs and I hope you are here with me as we
help the smallest of chicks join our flock.
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I cant wait to hear from you and I have a special request this week.
I am planning a viewer special type episode, in which I will answer your questions directly
. So if you have a question you would like answered during our viewers special email
it to me at ourwylife@gmail.com.
I’ll put the email in the description as well.
Have a great week and thanks for joining us in Our Wyoming Life.