New calf! Arrived TODAY, 21 Feb. And mommy rejected it.

Sigh!  A cute, and I think healthy calf plopped onto the cold, wet pasture a few hours ago.  Mom ignored it the entire time.

I skiddaddled off to the farm store, got some colostrum powder.  Mixed with water, picked up the calf, got it out of the cold wet pasture into a cold dry horse stall.  Started feeding it, he eventually got a hang of the bottle.

It's too cold out here, the boss says, let's bring him inside!  'You're only saying that because he's shivering so much.'  

Sigh.  She's right.  He's in my shower.

He's beautiful - congratulations! What a sweet baby! We've had a lot of livestock in the house, too - goats, chickens, ducks, lol. We don't have any cows, yet. ;)

Lucky you were around!

Are you looking for help, or are you just sharing the experience?  Either is acceptable!

Carla:  Goats and chickens for me too!  And now a brown cow.  A dexter, BTW.

We dried her (it looks like a her) off, she warmed up, she learned to like the bottle (2 pints of colostrum the past 5 hours), she stood up about 2 hours ago, walked a few laps around the bathroom, went back into the shower, and went to sleep.


>> Are you looking for help, or are you just sharing the experience?

Eliot:  Mostly the latter.  But if I'm doing something wrong, I'm receptive to 'Hey!  Cut that out!'  After 30 minutes of Googling, I'm ok with what we're doing.  It seems easy.  Fortunately I picked up powdered colostrum and not the colostrum supplement.  And I had a similar experience with goats a few years back, they were in my bathroom for a while too.

well then, thanks for sharing!  I hope we can all learn something from your experience.

I'm going into my 4th calving season with my Dexters ... I haven't had any rejected calves, but it does seem to take about three days for the calf and mom to really bond.  My cows also have an unpleasant tendency to leave the calf alone on the second day - the calf hides someplace and sleeps and mom eats grass leaving me to stress and go find the calf!  After the 3rd day mom and baby have it figured out, so I now just move the pair into the barn for that time.  First time moms are definitely more difficult!

There's a cow in my bathroom.

About a day old now.  Her name is Willow.

Actually, her full name is Saint Vultureproof Willamena Of The Field, 25 or 6 to 10 .

Is this the same calf Gary, or are you starting a bathroom herd? 😃😉

Glad your calf is doing well despite the circumstances.
Our dexter just calved as well!
A little bull calf, we use the mom for a milk cow, so we are excited to have fresh milk again.