A mothering EPD would be good, of course, with commercial cows it wouldn't do us much good ;-) . But there are a lot of things that can interfere with how a cow, and especially a heifer mothers up.
Any time you have to assist a heifer you run the chance that the heifer will be standoffish to the calf. Usually if you leave them alone for an hour or so the heifer will settle down and start checking the baby out, and then mother it. If you have to take the baby away from the new mother (cow OR heifer) of course you run the chance that when you bring it back she won't accept it. This is even worse when you have to take the calf before the cow had a chance to at the VERY least sniff it. A long and difficult birth, even if you didn't assist, can cause problems also. Then, you can add in the ones that get overwrought, and OVER mother. Have had a few of those too.
This heifer just had the deck stacked against her from the start. The calf was on the big side, and one leg was slightly out of wack. Then, add in the fact that we weren't checking her, and she was out in the big pasture. So when we found her, she had been working at it for several hours (by all rights we should have had a real wreck). Then, we had to get her in, and she really didn't know where we wanted her to go. She was wobbly as we brought her in, and it took a while. By this time she was pretty darn stressed and tired. Then, we put her in a barn by herself, and then yank this calf out of her. After this, rather than leave her calf with her, we immediately dragged it into the house, so it wouldn't get hypothermia. She was worked up enough that she probably would have taken a while before she did more than look at him, and he was pretty stressed. Right now, she still thinks that we are out to get her, and really I don't blame her. Her calf still isn't up and around, so we have to go out and bug her at least 3 times a day, when we feed him. She is bad, but we have had worse ones. At least she shows a little interest in her calf, and she isn't trying to kill it ;-) .
Now, I am not saying she will stay around, because we have lots of animals that would have settled down by now, if they even got that worked up in the first place. But I do see where the problems came from, and a lot of them really weren't her fault. Add in the fact that we won't have any need for a replacement calf for at least 2 months, and she is going to get a chance to keep her baby.