Re Training 3 Week Old Calf ?

[Stocker Steve]

Lost a cow and brought her calf in. Tried to give it a bottle. Calf was just wild and not interested. Any tips on working with a calf that has become attached to Mama ?

 

[TCRanch]

Might try a bucket. Maybe even secure it & walk away, watch to see what it does. Awfully young for pellets/creep/starter but maybe a little, plus hay, and sprinkle dry milk replacer on it. If you want to go the bottle route, you're prob going to have to secure the calf and essentially force the nipple. Give it time! Another option: do you have a cow that's a heavy milker & will sometimes let others rob? Bring her in with her calf, shut all 3 together & see if she adopts your orphan.

 

[MurraysMutts]

Sometimes a bucket of milk works great!

I usually pen em and let em think about it for 12 hrs or so. The more time ya spend just sitting with them, the better. They calm down after a while.

Sounds like a good time to buy a nurse cow with a calf already on her....


Hehe.. that last one I had. She was BIG.
Big enough I couldnt hold her back in a corner by myself. We were in the stock trailer. She rammed/smashed me. I doused her face with milk. A few times of that going round in circles in half a trailer (divider gate) she decided she was hungry and took that bottle!

 

[Rydero]

Have a mat pen? I'll lock the calf in mine then i close the side off like there's a cow in there. Coax or convince the calf into there and push myself right behind it so it's head is sticking through the closed headgate. Hold it there. Get an assistant to force bottle feed the calf. Usually after a couple times a hungry calf figures it out. Then the assistant doesn't need me anymore and I do anything besides bottlefeeding, lol.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Short on pens right now so I snubbed her head to a power pole. It's color is close to her mother's, but she was not having it and got very vocal. I popped the wide cut nipple in and squeezed each time she bawled. So she gargled the first half of the bottle, and played with the nipple after that.

 

[Buck Randall]

Short on pens right now so I snubbed her head to a power pole. It's color is close to her mother's, but she was not having it and got very vocal. I popped the wide cut nipple in and squeezed each time she bawled. So she gargled the first half of the bottle, and played with the nipple after that.

I don't know if it will work to get her bottle trained, but it sounds like a good way to give her pneumonia.

 

[moses388]

If the calf is hungry it will eat. Do you watch the calf? The calf could be eating some place else.

 

[M.Magis]

Lost a cow with a 3 week old calf a couple years ago. It was wild as a deer. I was eventually able to get it penned in the barn. After a couple days I assumed it was getting hungry so I trapped it between a gate and a wall and forced a bottle in its mouth. It fought pretty hard but eventually got most of it down. The second time went smoother, and by the third it came running when it saw me. We made it my sons 4H steer. It doesn't take them long to figure out you supply the food now.

 

[Dave]

We had one this year this year. It was B's cow and he was gone for 4 days. The cowboys came over and roped it. The wife told them to put it in the barn and she would feed it until B got home. Walk in the pen and this calf would take you. He bruised the wife pretty good. I would go in the pen and slam it against the wall. Preferably with its butt in a corner. Just used a standard nipple. The calf would suck but when you let it go it would take you again. B got home and took the calf. He said it worked out in about a week. It is a heifer. He said he might keep it and make a cow out of it. I told him that was just what he needed a crazy cow. He was joking, it will be on a truck this fall.

 

[Stocker Steve]

I don't know if it will work to get bottle trained, but it sounds like a good way to give her pneumonia.

Seems to work really well. Might be a timing thing.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Moved the calf over to a maple clump. When she cries my wife makes a bottle and I walk the calf up. She winds her lead around the clump, starts to bellow, and I give her the bottle.

Bitch.

 

[MurraysMutts]

He said... Bitch. Hahaha

Pictures.....lmao
What's a maple clump?

 

[Ridgefarmer63]

I like the idea of the willing extra momma, although I have never had a calf that was nursing for three weeks then lost it's momma. My sample size is pretty small, but I have had four calves over the years that we started to bottle feed and then with-in 2 to 4 weeks they either latched onto to their momma or another willing cow if their mother wasn't able.

 

[Ferd]

I lost a cow a couple of years ago and thought that the calf was big enough to make it on his own. He got to looking rough so I put him in the barn and got a bottle. I got ready to do battle, but when I stuck it in his face he grabbed on and sucked it dry. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

This year I had a heifer that paid no attention to her calf. Gave birth and walked away. Not even a lick. I couldn't get her interested. He's a good sized bull, probably a painful birth, or else she just isn't a momma. For a while I had to straddle him to hold him still and cram the nipple in his mouth. Now if I am around him without a bottle he comes up behind me and shoves his head between my legs.

 

[Hereford2]

I started a 3 week old calf on the bottle and a 5 week old calf on the bottle, the trick seems to be lock them in a small pen without anything for 12 to 18 hour's, then give them the bottle, usually after they take the bottle 3 time's, they come running ..