Ultimate bottle calf survival guide: How to ensure their happy and healthy life

[Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay we've got a a baby calf here so that's a the neighbor just gave it uh he had a cow that had twins yesterday and it was a really old cow and she's not going to be able to give enough milk for both of them and so he said we could have this one at the longer roses on the bottom it's a little heifer born twin to a bull which means it's called a free Martin and 99 of all free Martins never breed so we'll treat her like a spirit born yesterday so she has had colostrum the mother did make enough of a an utter to provide them colostrum colostrum is the first milk after they have a calf that's full of antibodies and nutrients get stuck I tried to make her a little bed out of straw here so a clean place for Lily your dog doesn't know what to think of it but as you can see her mother has got her licked off pretty good we'll always do a little brushing on her to kind of simulate uh what her mother would do licking on her seems like a pretty healthy little calf she won't wait being a heifer and a twin both but we'll we'll go fix a bottle and feed her some milk replacement again she's had colostrum so we should be good there we're going to fix the first bottle for our new little baby calf that we just brought into the barn down here and I may do it a little bit differently than some of you have been taught to do it a lot of people will feed this two quart bottle twice a day and we'll get to that point a couple of weeks three weeks down the road but I would rather feed them a little bit much more often we're going to start with two cups of warm water just about the same temperature you want the ones the cow's milk to be which is around 100 degrees two cups that's all we're gonna do that sounds like such a little amount but most of the problems you run into with baby calves on the bottle is scours and that's usually from being overfit I would rather err on the side of underfeeding them than overfeeding them so we've got two cups of warm water we're going to use milk replacer and we're going to measure that out into two and a half ounces you may think that's a little too precise but again we're trying not to over feed them and do scours now the final I used to put it in here is simply the top I've cut off of an old milk jug makes it pretty handy and I really like how much it cost it's free put the milk replacer in there I'm going to Stir It Up with a little utensil I stole from my wife's drawer here I think it's a chopstick hot chocolate Chopstick or something like that anything can start it up and that milk replacer serves it pretty easy I'm going to put the nipple on and what if you've never raised baby calves before the nipple has a vent hole in it and you always want to have that up when you feed the cat and again that doesn't look like much but we're going to feed this calf this much about four times a day here for three or four days and we're gradually work it up to three times a day with maybe a third of the bottle and then now keep in mind this is a really small calf we'll get to it it's a heifer twin so it won't weigh 40 pounds so if you get a regular sized calf you might up just a little bit but again keep the amount down and feed it more often for the first four or five days just remember we're feeding them a small amount more often through the day to cut down on that chance of them getting scours because a baby calf once they get scours they could be gone within 10 12 hours so you do everything you can to keep them from getting in that situation [Music] I heard him balling for me so he's ready to eat hopefully come on in let's try to get him set this will be the first time he sucked the bottle so it may be a little bit of a chore to getting your sex all right sometimes they're really difficult to get started second because they've only had their mommy's teeth before but this little girl starts sucking like you get on the bottle for a week so we're feeding her around noon we'll feed her again around four this afternoon and then probably about eight or nine tonight and then we'll tomorrow we'll feed her four times as well because she's taking the bottle really good and again she was just born yesterday and of course Lily likes to get what slips out of her mouth here he'll win they end up being best friends with her over the next few weeks probably okay that's it good job she took every bit we need to brush her a little bit or rub on her not because we want to keep her looking pretty and clean but because if she was still on her mother her mother would be licking her at every feeding so this kind of simulates anything you could do nope nope nope get more of a natural environment the better a corgi nipping in her nose is not natural environment this is day eight for the little baby calf that we started on the bottle last week remember that we started feeding it four times a day two cups per feeding on day four we increase that to three cups per feeding but cut it down to three feedings per day and then yesterday we started on four cups per feeding twice a day as you can see the calf is doing great really healthy really responded good uh if we're still calling it a little black heifer if you would like to suggest a name you can do so on comments comments below and we will let you know next week what name we decided on but the calf as you can see is really doing good foreign [Music]

Channel: CROWN CATTLE COMPANY

Views: 1,306

Keywords: #bottlecalf, #babycalf, #scours, #ranching, #farming, #dog, #herding, #hay, #tractor, #cattle, #babycalves, #calves, #baling, #agriculture, #beef, #raking, #corgi, #country, #rural, #grain, #johndeere, #corral, #cows, #bulls, #FFA, #4H

Id: RmbmX2W5TFQ

Length: 7min 59sec (479 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 02 2023