bottle feeding

[TMRwife]

Had a new calf Saturday a.m. Found her too weak to stand on Sunday afternoon, brought her in and bottle fed her (which she was almost too weak to take, but we forced it). This morning eagerly took bottle and was standing up. Can we try to let her mom in with her? We believe she nursed at least a couple of times on Saturday, then not sure what happened. Mom was VERY attentive and pretty aggressive with us, but it was obvious the calf had not nursed for quite some time, probably because she couldn't stand. Really hard to separate them as mom is quite aggressive, so we want to be relatively sure that the calf will nurse before we try it.

 

[randiliana]

Well, the only way to know is to try it. Do you have a small pen you can put them in, one that you could let the cow out of fairly easily if it doesn't work? Usually once you open the gate, the wild cows will find it in a hurry and you can separate them again that way.