Storms and Bum Calves
#bfrdpwy #aginternship #RightRisk
Something I learned over the past week is the importance of checking on fences regularly, checking on high risk heifers who are pregnant and how difficult it can be to get a bum calf back onto its mother.
For my first point my bosses left over the weekend and I was told that we had a pair and a heifer who had not calved yet and who could have some problems with her pregnancy in a separate pasture and we had the other first year heifers who had calved in the pasture by them. We had a thunderstorm roll through the night before and I made sure to double check that everyone was okay before calling it a night.
The next morning, I went out and could not find the first-year heifer or pair anywhere, then realized that the gate had been torn down and they intermingled with the other first-year heifers. The problem with that was that I could not tell who had a calf and who didn’t because everyone was together.
After that, they went out the gate to a larger pasture and then it was even more difficult. The reason why we had the first-year heifer separated was because she was at risk because two of the other first-year [heifer]s had lost their claves and so we wanted to keep a watchful eye on her to make sure her or her calf didn’t die.
Another important part of my second week was trying to get a bum calf back onto his mom. The weekend before there was a thunderstorm that was bad and this cow had twins. Whether it was due to the weather or another factor, one of the twins did not survive and at that point the mom abandoned both calves. The calf that lived was sick and for a while it did not look like he would make it. But he pulled through and we got his mom back to the house so we could try to get him to suck. We tried to have as little human contact as possible and only bottle fed him twice. We then got his mom into the [chute]shoot and tried to get him to suck but he was weak and was not doing too well at sucking. We decided to put them in a pen together and see if he would try again. After a few days they started to bond and he is doing perfectly fine at the moment.
A concept that I may have done different was I would bring in the dead calf twin and skin it and see if maybe the mother would try to take the bum calf instead of separating them. But [A]lso, in doing that, there is also the risk of the mother not taking the calf as well.
Another concept that I would look at doing differently is directly right after a thunderstorm or any kind of weather that seemed to may have damage property I would immediately go out and check on everyone and check fences as well, because then you could have less risk of loose cattle and[/]or loss of life or injury to the livestock.
The only question that I really have is what other methods or ways could be used to help the calf be able to suck better or help the pair bond faster? The reason why is because I feel like since we had them apart for several days, I feel like the pair may have taken longer to bond than other pairs.
I plan to go out after storms or weather that could be damaging and check on the herds and fences more frequently so that if there is a problem, we can catch it earlier rather than later. Something else I plan to do is to learn how to assist in the birth of a calf so that, if in the future a problem arises, I can be there to make sure the pair is in good health. Also, I need to learn more about what I can do for a bum calf and how I can get it back on its mother and how to make sure they make a bond.
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CLICK here to view movieSubmitted by: Mckenna McGraw
Edited by: GrowinG Internship Team
