by Laura Reed, NWOSU Student
As long as I can remember, I have lived with animals. Starting with bottle-calves, then getting a herd of cattle, and eventually raising my own sheep. However, never, in all of my 25 years of living have I run into a problem quite like the one my family and I found ourselves in one Friday afternoon.
Recently, my father added to our menagerie of livestock, by purchasing nine Brahman heifers (female that has not given birth before; I.E. girl) and a bull. Four of the heifers were pregnant when we purchased them.
Now that I’ve set the scene, here is the story:
One of the Brahmans gave birth on a cold Friday morning. Most calves have an instinct to suckle at the teat of the cow, but this little girl had no clue what she was doing. After some research, my family decided she has Dummy Calf Syndrome (not the real name, but one of the common names for the disorder) which means that she has no sucking instinct, or that she suckles at inappropriate things, like ears or tails.
So, we have a stupid calf, and we cannot figure out how we are going to keep her alive. Move to my parents shower. It has all tile walls and floors, so a good place to keep a pooping and peeing baby that’s freezing and starving to death. Now, we tried to let her drink naturally from her mother, but she wouldn’t take the teat. Then we tried a calf bottle. To no avail. Now, you’ll remember that I said we had bottle-calves before. What happens when they won’t take the bottle (most of the time because they are too sick or weak) is that they get tubed. An unpleasant experience for all parties. The only good thing that can happen is that the calf gets a full belly. The worst danger is of course drowning the calf in milk by going down the wrong “tube.”
Finally, it’s the next Monday, and my mom and I are home alone. Neither one of us wants to tube this baby girl, so we get a bottle ready, and one of my Chemistry classmates gave me some things to try. While I was getting the bottle ready though, the calf started to actually suckle on my mom’s hoodie. Of course, when she wouldn’t take the bottle, we knew one thing we could try. I went to the laundry room, and grabbed a rag sock. Which I then put over the nipple of the bottle. The calf, affectionately named Cotton, drank the whole bottle, and has been doing so successfully (as long as it is covered by a sock) ever since.
In short, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, don’t give up hope. The solution may be odd, but dollars to donuts it’s out there.