Labrador Calf Mama

We got the call!  Our Friend the Farmer needed help with a newborn calf that was cold and doing poorly.  The weather was set to get colder and snowier.  Did we want to help with this one?  Did we?  You betcha!  So this weekend there’s been a calf in the kitchen.

The little bull calf was born Friday morning on John Steinbeck’s birthday, so of course we immediately named him Steinbeck.  Our Friend the Farmer doesn’t name his cattle, but that doesn’t exactly stop us from naming his cattle.  When he got here, Steinbeck was cold, shivering and still wet with birthing fluids on him.  We put him in a big crate in the kitchen to help him begin to warm up.  We weren’t exactly prepared for what happened next, Zoe our 8 month old Black Labrador jumped into the box with him and began to clean him up.  Zoe licked Steinbeck from head to toe, just as a mother cow would do.  Zoe recognized this as a baby who needed her help, not bothered at all that he outweighed her.

Like human babies, it is crucial that the calf get the mother’s colostrum.  Even if they need to be bottle fed, keeping the calf on their mother’s milk is best.  This means milking the cow, well, this means Our Friend the Farmer milking the cow…this is a beef cow, not a milk cow, same equipment, different temperament.  The goal is to get the calf well and for it to go back to the Mama Cow, so the milking is good for everybody, except Our Friend the Farmer.  He delivered the precious colostrum to me in the one size fits all calves recycled beer bottle, all ready to feed to Steinbeck who loved it.  He did a good albeit noisy job of sucking up his first bottle.

Zoe stayed on duty all night.  Sleeping with Steinbeck and trying to let us know every time the calf moved a muscle.  Steinbeck’s front feet were born curled in.  This can happen for a variety of reasons, the Mama cow might have eaten lupin, which can cause it, or his position in the womb, being cold and having cold extremities is not good for this condition.  See how he stands on his front ‘knuckles’!As you can imagine, this is not Our Friend the Farmer’s first rodeo.  This curly hoof has happened before and he’s had luck splinting calves with this situation.  My Loving Spouse helps attach the home-made calf splints to Steinbeck with duck tape.The biggest concerns over Steinbeck were that he stopped sucking, oh and he needed to poop.  Well, in order to be a healthy calf with all his stomach parts he needed to poop.  He also needed to eat, suck, take the bottle, slurp up that good cow milk.Steinbeck does not like to poop.  I do not know if he has a calf-tummy ache, but this little bull could really holler, moo, when he needed to poop, which was lucky for me, as I was the Calf-care-taker-on-deck.  This mooing gave me a warning that there was soon to be calf poop in my kitchen (which is sort of gross).  I quickly donned my rubber gloves, grabbed lots of paper towels and handfuls of plastic grocery bags (see we recycle!)  I don’t mean to brag, but I was pretty darn good at catching cow poop….right into the plastic bag, tie it up throw it outside, wipe, repeat.

We could keep Steinbeck warm.  Zoe made sure he wasn’t alone, but we couldn’t get him to eat… not a good sign, so he got tubed to put Mama Cow’s milk straight into his tummy.  Still…the little calf was taking one step forward, two steps back.  It was not looking good…  The vet had one more thing to try…steroids.  Perhaps in the trauma of birth his brain is not damaged, just temporarily swollen.  Steroids and tubing 4 times a day, which only Our Friend the Farmer can do.  So, Steinbeck has been moved with his crate to Our Friend the Farmer’s basement, we’re keeping our fingers and our paws crossed for Steinbeck to make a full recovery……and Zoe the wonder Mama dog…is looking all over the house for her calf.

……

March 2014

We are sorry to say, that little Steinbeck did not make it….

part of the nature of farming, but we did all give it our best.