Two strikes and your hamburger

At least that’s going to be the rule for the bovine denizens or our place.

The story behind this:

We have a heifer that calved early yesterday morning. This is her second calf and so we wrongly assumed that since the calf was up and moving and so was mom that nature would take its course and all would be fine.

Ooooohhhhh how wrong we were. This heifer has got to be the worst mother I have ever seen. She dropped or stepped on her first calf and it had a bum leg and couldn’t stand after it was born. We were able to get it up and moving and then she refused to feed it. The Dh had to back her against the stall and make her stand still so the poor thing could eat, and he had to do this three or four times a day until the calf was about 4 days old and able to get up and down on its own.

So about 6:30 last night the Dh’s oldest brother called and mentioned that momma cow was in the top pasture but the baby was nowhere to be seen. The Dh and I took the truck out and drove around the bottom pasture where we found ...... nothing! So we drove the top pasture, still no baby. Supper is ready so we go eat, then round up the kids and head back out around 7:45 to search the pastures on foot.

Forty-five minutes later one of the boys finds the poor thing. It was about five feet beyond the fence down by the creek and had obviously been there for quite sometime. We loaded it on the four-wheeler and took it back to the barn, were the momma cow doesn’t seem to want to let it eat. Dh backs her against the stall and tries to help the calf get started suckling. It appears however that mom hasn’t let her milk down. He works for almost thirty minutes before he can get milk out of her and then the baby doesn’t seem to know how or what to do. *big groan* Did I mention the temps are still in the 90’s, it is hotter than hell in the barn and momma cow continually swings her tail and hits Dh in the head. And her tail ...... eeeeeewwwww I won’t even mention how totally nasty her tail was. Another thirty minutes and Dh has milked about a pints worth out the momma, which we poured in a bottle and baby sucked right down when he figured out what it was. Then miracles of miracles he headed straight for mom and started to chow down.

We locked them in the small enclosure by the barn last night and they seem to be okay this morning. We didn’t actually see him eat this morning but when I offered him a bottle of starter milk he wasn’t interested so we hope that means he had already eaten. There is a smaller pasture on one side of the barn and we let them out into it, instead of with the other cows and have been checking on the pair off and on all day. This evening I’ll offer the little guy another bottle of starter milk and see what happens. Ideally someone will see him nursing and we will know that all is well in that area.

Dh says when the baby is weaned, momma heifer goes either to the butcher or the stockyards, she's had two chances and blown them both so he's getting rid of her one way on another.