New Addition to the Herd

Newborn calves rest and sleep a lot the first couple of days after birth. This is the new calf at about a day old. 

The new calf at 2 days.

 This yawn shows off the calf's interesting markings. 

The newborn calf at about 2 weeks.

New calf and Racer, her mother. 

Racer and Racer's mother Gigi, the black white-faced cow to the left.

The latest addition to the herd. A heifer born two weeks ago Saturday at about 8:00 a.m. The first calf of a cow named Racer. Racer is pretty small and this calf was pretty big. Neither Racer nor the calf got up until sometime in the afternoon, many hours after the birth. The calf looked very healthy and was moving vigorously shortly after birth but I wasn’t sure Racer was going to make it. I did notice that her uterus wasn’t prolapsed, which was a good sign.

I decided to give them a little time to see if Racer would recover enough to nurse. So I went down below (the lower end of the valley) to run some weekly errands and try to get some colostrum and milk replacer. Colostrum is crucial if you need to bottle feed a newborn calf. It gets the digestive tract going and gives a big boost to the immune system. A newborn calf will usually die if it doesn’t get any colostrum. A lot of people keep it on hand in case of problems. We usually don’t have problems, so I wasn’t prepared.

I called about noon and Racer was up but not very active, so I decided to get the colostrum anyway just in case. The first feed store I went to didn’t have any on hand, and the guy I talked to said it needed to be given to the calf within six hours. At that point, six hours had already passed and even if I had the colostrum in hand, it would have been a good hour back. So I hoped for the best and headed home.

When I got back, the calf was lying down, but Racer had gotten up and cleaned her up a bit.  By the time I had finished some chores about an hour later, the calf was nursing while a bunch of crows and four eagles fought over the afterbirth.

Colostrum is still somewhat effective after six hours but is best within those first few hours. I don’t know if the calf got any within that crucial period, but I have my fingers crossed. At present, calf and mother appear to be doing fine. Time will tell how they do in the long run.

This calf has some of the most unique markings I have ever seen amongst our cattle. They are almost perfectly symmetrical with thin brown lines following the lips like lipstick through a white circled muzzle and a large nearly symmetrical white patch on the forehead. I am naming her Harlequin - Harley for short because Harlequin sounds pretty pretentious. It is dangerous to name cows, especially if you are raising them for beef as I am, but I have my reasons (which will be explained later).

P.S. Just had a new calf today. Gigi, Racer’s mother had a little bull calf, solid black like an Angus even though he’s part Hereford. No drama. This is Gigi’s third calf. There were a couple of turkey vultures in the field cleaning up the afterbirth.