Need help grafting an unwilling calf

[Katpau]

On February 11th I had a 3 year old cow give birth to twin bull calves. She accepted both. The cow raised my lightest weaning weight of the heifers last year so I am concerned she does not have the milk for two. On February 14th I saw another cow in labor. She is 9 and has successfully calved and raised 8 calves. We left her alone. When we checked her latter, she had not yet calved. We brought her in and palpated. There was a large calf who was presenting correctly, but appeared to be dead. We had to pull him in the dark using flashlights, and it was the most difficult pull I have ever done. It took my husband and myself and a calf puller to get him out. The calf puller came apart when he was half way out and we could not get it back together in the dark. Finally got him out and we both agreed, he had to weight at least 120 plus pounds. The next morning we weighed him, and found he only weighed 100 pounds. I guess we were just exhausted. The cow has always had large calves, so that was not the problem. We found the problem early the next morning when we went back down to check on her. There was another calf hanging out of her with the afterbirth over its head. Also dead. This one still had a pink tongue, so I think it might have still been alive. I felt pretty bad, because my husband had said the night before, "should we check for a twin?" I said "this calf is huge, no way there's another".

Anyway, that gets me to our current dilemma. It seemed logical to put the other twin on this cow. We brought it across the creek and put it in with the mom who had just lost twins. She did not want it at first, but after a few hours, she was licking it and trying to encourage it to suck. The calf would smell her udder, then walk away bawling. We left it with her overnight, but it still would not suck. We would put it next to the cow, and stick her nipple in it's mouth to squirt milk, but it was having no part of it. We milked the cow, and tried to get it to bottle feed, but it made it clear, that it would rather die. It looked like it was getting weaker, so we tried to tube it with her milk, and when we thought we had the tube in the right spot, I released the milk, and it started to go down, but then the calf struggled and milk came back up. I freaked, and thought we had it in the lungs, so pulled the tube. He spit up for awhile, then went back to yelling for his mother. Finally I could take it no more. It had been well over a day and half since it had fed, so we loaded it back in the ATV and hauled it back to it's birth mother. She no longer wanted it, but it was as determined to eat now, as it had been determined to starve before. We gave her some grass pellets in a pan to distract her, and he ate until he seemed satisfied. This morning, she still does not really want him and will push him gently away if he comes by her head, but she will let him drink.

I would like to know if there is still any hope of grafting this calf. It would be so much better for him to be fed by a cow who wants him and has plenty of milk. I have never had this problem before. It is usually the cow that must be convinced. That can be done with some ropes and time, but how do you make a calf suck when he decides he would rather starve?

 

[suzorse]

keep him with the foster mom and he should get hungry enough to nurse, just keep encouraging him
2 times a day, and milk a bottle out of the foster mom and get that into him, he is just being a stubborn little putz , back him into the corner and get the bottle in his mouth and squeeze his jaws around it , he will get the idea
Suzanne

 

[randiliana]

Let him be hungry for a while. And leave him with his new mama. He's a week old, he won't starve that quickly, just make sure he's out of any bad weather.

 

[cag]

We had twins last year ... Tryed grafting ... I would leave the twins with their momma

 

[Katpau]

I have had plenty of experience over the years with bottle calves, but never saw one this stubborn before. I tried every trick to get him to suck, but he would just struggle then go limp. I occasionally got a suck or two out of him, but that was only because I forced the milk in his mouth. As soon as I let go of his head, he would open his mouth and turn his head away. I could direct him up beside the cow and she would lick him and try to get him to suck. He would line up like he was going to suck, but as soon as he smelled the udder he would turn away and go back to bawling and trying to get out of the pen. He would either pace the perimeter, screaming for his Mom, or would lie down quietly sulking. I kept him there for two full days and one night.

Randilanna,
The calf weighs about 65 pounds. Most of my calves are in the 80 to 95 pound range, so this one looks frail to me. How long could I safely leave it without any food. Do you really think it would eventually give in? I am afraid it might just sulk and die.

 

[OakCreekRanch]

It will take a little while but the calf will give in and accept the foster cow as his momma cow. Plus it will save you money from buying replacer....

 

[A.Lane]

When you get the teat in his mouth try rubbing his hind end and anus. It triggers a sucking reflex sometimes. I know it sounds gross but if you watch calves nursing their mommas will lick them all over their hind end. Good Luck

 

[randiliana]

I think he could go a couple days, but would probably feed him a little bit. Enough to keep him going, but not full. Most aren't that stubborn. Maybe just keeping him away from his dam for 2-3 days and he will forget. It will be a PITA if you have to tube him, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

 

[Katpau]

Thought I would give an update on this calf. I decided to let him stay with his twin on the birth mother, since I could not convince him to suck on the old cow. His 3 year old mother had a small level hairless udder with little nipples. The 10 year old cow I was trying to graft him on had larger nipples, a slightly sloped udder, and for some reason, had not lost all of the long hair on that udder. Usually, one of my earliest signs of a cow nearing labor is that the hair falls off the udder as it begins to fill. That calf hated it.

A week ago I had a two year old heifer give birth to a tiny little 60 pound calf. The smallest non-twin we have ever had, since we began weighing about 10 years ago. We found her in the morning standing over it. It was dead. Its eyes were all white. Not the milky white of death, but the white of severe blindness. She looked for the calf after we removed it, calling for several days. When another heifer calved a couple days latter, I was afraid she would try to steal it. She looked it over good, licked it a bit, but then walked away. It seemed she he knew it was not hers. I was thinking I should put her with one of the twins, but after my prior experience decided to leave well enough alone. The 3 year old with twins was in the same pasture as my first calf heifers, so she could be fed better than the other pairs that are out on pasture only. Than something happened I could hardly believe. The twin who rejected the old cow decided he liked the looks of this heifer, and made the decision to suck. For the last 5 days I have seen him sucking on her repeatedly. She has an udder very similar to the twins mother, but a little fuller and if I had to guess I would say she has more milk. This calf is smarter than I thought. He comes in from behind and sucks as the cow grazes. I have not seen her try to mother him. She does not talk to him or lick him, nor really acknowledge him at all, but she makes no effort to stop his nursing either. I am not sure what to make of it. I can't decide if I should give this heifer a second chance. Since she is now nursing a calf, I will let her stay until weaning, but I worry about her total lack of mothering. She seems to be OK with nursing, but she does not really mother him. I am not sure if her own calf died because she did not help it up and it died of hypothermia before it could suck, or if it was born dead. It has been in the 60's and 70's during the day here, but it gets down to freezing at night. It was laying in a little dip in the pasture in about an inch of cold water when we found it. I am not sure if it was born there, or born up the hill and then struggled some, eventually ending up there.

Would you give the heifer a second chance?

 

[cowgirl8]

We've had more than our share of grafting this year. Seems we started out the calving year with problem after problem. Anywho, what i do to graft is i do not do it with a newborn. They need to get that bottle calf status first. I've found newborns to be a little fearful if the cow acts aggressive. We also hobble the cow for a few days until she excepts the calf.. So my system is, we get the calf nursing the bottle 100% and keep it with the cow that's hobbled. If it doesnt nurse her right away on its own, we'll milk her by hand and feed it to the calf once a day and or let it nurse the cow in the chute. We all know that once a calf gets to bottle calf status it will grab a hold of anything to suck even after its nursed a full bottle in 10 seconds. If the calf seems fearful of the cow, we will feed the calf half a bottle and then feed the cow to get her attention away from the zombie calf behind her. Sometimes it takes a few days, sometimes it takes a couple weeks, just depends on how aggressive the cow is. This year we took a calf and grafted it onto a heifer who lost her calf 2 weeks before and was almost dry. Since this calf was older, about 2 weeks, she would nurse anything that was in front of her. SO, supply and demand, i'd feed the calf part of a bottle and it would work that hobbled heifers udder over for hours. Curious, we got the heifer in the chute to see if she was producing milk and milked a full bottle out of her so it worked. She's still being a little stubborn, but as the calf gets older, she'll finally give up. And once they are in the pasture, its been my experience that this calf will also sneak milk from other cows while their calf nurses.

 

[Katpau]

Thank you cowgirl. That is some good advice. The calf I had tried to graft had already been sucking the cow for 4 days, and was not happy with a substitution. He is now quite happy to steal from the heifer who lost her calf. I think he just did not like the hairy udder and longer teats on the old cow.

Would you keep the heifer he is sucking on now? I would think she would try to mother him, since she lost her own calf, and is allowing him to nurse. Do you think that because she pretty much ignores him, that she would be a bad mother to her own natural calf?

 

[ANAZAZI]

Thank you cowgirl. That is some good advice. The calf I had tried to graft had already been sucking the cow for 4 days, and was not happy with a substitution. He is now quite happy to steal from the heifer who lost her calf. I think he just did not like the hairy udder and longer teats on the old cow.

Would you keep the heifer he is sucking on now? I would think she would try to mother him, since she lost her own calf, and is allowing him to nurse. Do you think that because she pretty much ignores him, that she would be a bad mother to her own natural calf?

Time will tell. If you keep her until weaning there is more time to find out.
In my opinion she could probably take care of her own calf if she had one, and I doubt the temperature was an issue when she had her first one. Sometimes we lose one.
Now, as long as the other calf nurses her she does a job and you can keep her. Otherwise she is a freeloader or passenger and then I am the first to advice that you cull her. :2cents:

 

[cowgirl8]

I almost never let a young cow raise twins. So i always pull one twin off the first day,and keep them ready on a bottle for anyone who loses a calf. Pulling an already bonded calf of a few weeks off its mother is going to be difficult, but not impossible. If you can get it to nurse a bottle and get it to bottle calf status it would help....Heifers too are usually the easiest to trick into thinking a calf not their is. I have a heifer whose calf was born dead, i hauled it off before she would even smell it. Another heifer calved the next day in that same spot and the first heifer who lost her calf ran over and said, "My baby!"....she also bonded to that calf. They both adjusted and both nurse this fat little calf. I just left them out there because these are heifers and if this calf gets twice the milk, it should grow better than if it were on just one heifer momma..Also in our heifer pasture, i see these heifers letting other calves nurse them, you dont see this in a mature cow pasture. So, if this heifer thinks it hers, i'd go with it.