thejessens - 2/23/2011 07:01

Hi There!
Well we have been calving for ~1wk and had to pull our first calf this morning at about 3:30am. This cow is a 1st calf heifer that had been laboring for awhile before we decided to pull her calf. During this "before" time she had been in our heifer barn in a pen adjacent to another Cow who had her calf earlier last evening. We pulled the calf and immediately put into our heifer barn pen, ran the cow in shortly there after. The cow is very mean/rough with the calf. For instance, the cow would walk over the calf, pushed the calf around with her head, snorted at her calf, etc... We did run the cow back in the shoot, milked her and gave that first milk/colostrum to the calf. The calf is very healthy; up, moving around well, and has all the instints to suck. We have tried puting "calfclaim" on the calfs back and seeing what the mother does. She still didnot claim, nor show interest in licking her calf... was still very violent towards the calf. We also tried spraying hairspray on the cows nose and along the back of the calf, with no sucess. We moved out all the other pairs to a different barn, so they are now alone in the barn together. The calf has been fed with mothers milk ~2pints worth so is fed enough till morning. We could not trust the cow to be left alone with the calf because she is so violent towards the calf so they are in ajdacent pens. We are definetly in need of some advice here... Like I have said, the cow shows absolutely no interest towards her calf and is very violent towards her. Any suggestions/advice would be GREATLY appreciated!!!! This calf is only a couple hours old so we definetly have time to work with the two but would like some ideas before our day starts. Our plan of action right now is that come day break (1.5-2 hrs from now) we will run the cow back in the shoot and let the calf suck, while the cow is in the shoot. We will also take some of the mothers milk, straight from the utters and place on the calf to see if the cow will recognize then. Any other suggestions would be wonderful! THANKS!!