Heifer adopts wrong calf

[turklilley]

Have a new heifer that calved today, she ignores her own calf, but cleans and mothers another calf born yesterday. So I have one calf with two mothers, and one with none. Have never seen that before. I have her and her calf seperated tonight. Hopefully she will take her own calf to raise.

 

[cfpinz]

We had a 3rd calver abandon her calf this year, she tried to steal a calf from her daughter. Two weeks later, she brought a little over 700 bucks. Would you like fries with that?

 

[Stocker Steve]

There is a wide range of mothering ability in my put together herd.

I have a few that like to hide in the woods with their calves. All are angus or pinzer.
I have a number that are very calm and stand by the hay most of the time. Most have shorthorn or hereford blood.
I have three that abandoned their calf, delivered poor suckers, and/or stole another. All Char/Simi crosses. All are going to town.

 

[LoveMoo11]

One of those unexplainable things. Hope you can get it sorted out. Never had that happen with our cattle but one of the barn cats did it once. She had her own litter of 5 kittens and kept stealing kittens from another mother cat til she ended up with nine. Took real good care of them though.

 

[jcarkie]

heifers don't know what they are doing most of the time. i try to seperate mine for a few days to let them bond with the calf. you may have to force her let it nurse,

 

[mnmtranching]

Buy penning her with her calf and out of sight of other calves she should be OK.
She is a dumb one and when put back with the herd she likely will nurse any calf that wants to nurse.
If you don't want the extra work of tending to her every year sell or eat her.

 

[farmwriter]

We had a similar situation several years back. A heifer had trouble and calf had to be pulled. Cow broke free before calf nursed, and she took off. Before we could get them back together, a heifer who had not yet calved adopted the calf and let it suck, even though calf was getting nothing. We penned the calf with the right cow, but she never paid it any attention. The calf cried all day for adoptive mom, and adoptive mom paced and hollered right back for the calf. With the calf going 24 hours without nursing, we put him in the barn and on the bottle. He did fine, and the cow has since then calved and raised her calves fine.

 

[msscamp]

Have a new heifer that calved today, she ignores her own calf, but cleans and mothers another calf born yesterday. So I have one calf with two mothers, and one with none. Have never seen that before. I have her and her calf seperated tonight. Hopefully she will take her own calf to raise.

I would give her a little 'nudge', so to speak, and pen her with her calf. We had a cow that would steal the calf of any cow that happened to calve within the time frame of her own calving, and she would abandon her own calf. Unfortunately, she raised hellishin' good calves and never passed this particular trait on to them, so we just penned her when she got close to calving. That solved the problem. Sounds like you might have the same kind of deal with this heifer.

 

[tlmcr]

I had two cows swap calves last year. I saw the first calf born, tagged him and then a week later I was gone on a trip the second cow calved and by the time I returned home they swapped calves. The cow that calved first would search out her natural calf and stand behind him and lick him the entire time she nursed her surrogate baby. I wouldn't have believed it if I had not tagged the first calf.

 

[j bear premier farm]

Puttng the heifer and the calf in a seperate location will probably do the trick. You are probably going to want to make sure that the heifer is going to allow the calf to nurse, and is taking care of the calf as far as keeping it clean after you have put them together.
i would probably cull that cow and calf out of the herd, not genetics you really want to keep around.