Homestead mailing list

[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

Lynn Wigglesworth wrote:
> Hi Bev; I'm still here. One of my young cows had a calf on Saturday. It's a 
> small, first-time mother, and the calf was small (40-50 pounds). I don't 
> know if it was premature, or just small, but it was weak and within 2 hours, 
> it look dead.

What would be a normal weight and what breed of calf?


 I could only tell that it was alive because it's leg was
> twitching. We brought it in and put it in the bathtub with very warm water 
> and rubbed it for about an hour. 

Would love to see that one on video.  It would be worth an hour of 
download time!

By then it would weakly suck on our
> fingers, so I gave it a bottle of milk replacer, egg, and molasses. It spent 
> the afternoon on a beanbag chair in front of the woodstove.

Tell me you got pictures...

> When it was completely dry, we took it out and lured the mother into a box 
> stall in the barn, and locked them in together. We got it a good drink off 
> it's mother (who, fortunately, has good mothering instincts...first-timers 
> sometimes don't, especially when you've taken the calf away).
>
>  It drinks on it's own now, and has been getting stronger and stronger, and 
> this afternoon it escaped from the box stall and was wandering around the 
> barn. When they are strong enough to get into mischief, you know they'll 
> probably make it. It really cold and very windy here (-20 to -30 degree wind 
> chill tonight), so I plan to keep them locked up until it warms up on 
> Wednesday. That's been my life lately.

That's a great story Lynn.  That's what I like to hear...uplifting. 
Thanks for sharing that!

Bev


--
I am having an out-of-money experience.
http://erthnsky.blogspot.com/
EarthNSky Farm, Northwest Georgia, USA