calf rejection

[Anonymous]

Mother cow gave birth to second calf. Lots of confusion at birth with rest of herd. Head butting etc. Mother recognizes calf but keep head butting her calf down when it stands. I put mother in chute and let calf get first drink of colostrum and pretty much kept the cow locked up all day.. Will this mother accept this calf and let her feed or do I need to bottle feed or keep the mother head locked?

 

[PATB]

You may have to repeat the procedure for several days before mother accepts calf. The longest I have had to do so far has been 2 weeks on a pulled calf and first calf heifer. I hope I do not have that problem with the 1st pull this year on a heifer.

pat

 

[Anonymous]

David, can we have an update? Has the cow accepted her calf yet?

 

[TLCfromARK]

If the calf is healthy after 3 or 4 days it's normally strong enough to take the milk from momma. It will just wear her down until she lets it nurse.
;-)

 

[Jake]

You may have to repeat the procedure for several days before mother accepts calf. The longest I have had to do so far has been 2 weeks on a pulled calf and first calf heifer. I hope I do not have that problem with the 1st pull this year on a heifer.

pat

We had a first calf last year that would not take a calf we tried to graft. We ended up selling her and we had another that we had to have penned up and tie her up for over a month before she finally took it. It all depends on the cow these two both knew the two dead calves that we drug onto the trailer were theirs they just didn't want anything to do with any other calf.

 

[CattleAnnie]

Hi David,
I've got a couple cows in the herd that get pretty excited right after they calve. Both get especially wound up when their calf first wobbles to his feet (roaring, bellowing, raking the ground, etc). One gets so wound up, she will knock her calf off his feet, so what I usually do is isolate the cow from her calf for a couple of hours. That has seemed to be enough for them to settle down to motherhood.

On a somewhat related subject, when I'm grafting a calf or have a heifer that refuses her calf, I run her into the squeeze and give her a 1cc shot of oxytocin (spelling?). It causes uterine contractions and inhibits the cow's ability to "hold" up her milk. It also seems to give those maternal hormones a boost. Also I usually hobble the really nasty ones so they don't intimidate the calf by booting him every time he tries to have a suck. (Have had a past problem when I didn't do that by ending up with a calf that wouldn't suck unless the cow was run into the maternity pen and had her foot tied back. What a pain!).

Only exception to this is with a cow whose calf was over a month old when it died - tried to graft an orphan onto her, but she just wasn't buying what I tried to sell her. Oh well, win some, lose some.

Would love to hear everyone else's ideas...never hurts to learn a new way to skin the cat. (Speaking of which, I've never had any luck with skinning the dead calf and using it's hide on the grafter...gave that up two years ago - although some folk swear by it. I've occasionally rubbed the grafter with fresh placenta from the cow I'm trying to graft onto if she's had a still born calf...figure they go by smell, so what've I got to lose.)
Best of luck with your calf.

 

[Ann Bledsoe]

I've had real good luck with grafting calves by rubbing them with the placenta from the cow's own calf.
What I find works real well is to milk that reluctant mother and get her milk into the calf -- most cows will take the calf at the point where that calf starts to defecate her milk.

Watch those mama cows -- how do they find their own calf in a bunch? Not by sight. The vast majority will have a sniff under the calf's tail before deciding it truly is their calf -- feeding a calf the cow's own milk for a day or two before trying to graft it to her, will make it smell like she would expect her calf to smell, and makes it much more likely that she will accept it.

Ann B

Hi David,
I've got a couple cows in the herd that get pretty excited right after they calve. Both get especially wound up when their calf first wobbles to his feet (roaring, bellowing, raking the ground, etc). One gets so wound up, she will knock her calf off his feet, so what I usually do is isolate the cow from her calf for a couple of hours. That has seemed to be enough for them to settle down to motherhood.

On a somewhat related subject, when I'm grafting a calf or have a heifer that refuses her calf, I run her into the squeeze and give her a 1cc shot of oxytocin (spelling?). It causes uterine contractions and inhibits the cow's ability to "hold" up her milk. It also seems to give those maternal hormones a boost. Also I usually hobble the really nasty ones so they don't intimidate the calf by booting him every time he tries to have a suck. (Have had a past problem when I didn't do that by ending up with a calf that wouldn't suck unless the cow was run into the maternity pen and had her foot tied back. What a pain!).

Only exception to this is with a cow whose calf was over a month old when it died - tried to graft an orphan onto her, but she just wasn't buying what I tried to sell her. Oh well, win some, lose some.

Would love to hear everyone else's ideas...never hurts to learn a new way to skin the cat. (Speaking of which, I've never had any luck with skinning the dead calf and using it's hide on the grafter...gave that up two years ago - although some folk swear by it. I've occasionally rubbed the grafter with fresh placenta from the cow I'm trying to graft onto if she's had a still born calf...figure they go by smell, so what've I got to lose.)
Best of luck with your calf.