calf had a calf

[DRB]

a friend of mine (no it isn't me) had several heifers exposed to a bull late last summer...we gave them lutalace (sp.) to abort the pregnancys..but...one heifer had a calf last week...she showed little or no sign of being pregnant..she now 15 mths. and the calf seem to be doing well.. he is feeding portions of cotton seed meal and sweet feet 14%..she is producing a little more milk now and he bottle feeds the calf when he gets the oportunity...is there anything else he should be doing?....

 

[TheBullLady]

Sounds like he's doing everything he can. The heifer is probably too immature to milk as much as an older cow, but he's feeding her and the calf, so they should both do well.

 

[msscamp]

We've had that happen before, and what we did was set up a creep feeder for the calves. Our corrals are welded pipe and, for whatever reason, the north fence in the middle corral doesn't butt up against the feedbunks. Since we usually don't creep feed our calves and didn't have the usual set-up, Dad welded me a gate with gaps to accomodate the calves to go across the hole in the fence. I lured the calves through the gate with their bottle, and put a hog trough in the other corral so they could eat without having to worry about Mom. It helped the calves, and also helped Mom by taking some of the pressure off her.

 

[cowgirl Ibara]

sounds like everything is going really good. But i would keep calcuim on hand just incase. Since she is a young heifer i doubt she will have any problems but older cows who have had calves may start to pull the calcuim out of their own body to produce milk. They will become week, lay their head back and grind their teeth. But a shot of calcium makes them bounce back real fast. But everything sounds like its going great ^_^