Bottle Baby Bonanza!
A few weeks ago my manager asked me if I would like a couple bottle calves. Being somewhat of a masochist when it comes to all things homesteading, I of course agreed enthusiastically, and the rest is sleep deprivation history!
For the last couple of years I have been pondering the picking up of a milk cow initiative. The thing is, milk cows are a ton of work and I spent 15 years tending to dairy and meat goats. I think the goat experience was still a factor in my reluctance to procure a dairy animal over the last couple years. That and I like to travel a bit on occasion. It's hard to travel when you have an animal lactating. Well, it's not hard, it's just expensive, paid animal care is a touch costly.
However, I have been getting progressively more annoyed at myself for buying things when I should be making them, especially as I have the knowledge and physical ability to do so. Kinda like I need to be putting my labor where my principles are or something. That and I have an amazing neighbor who wants to split the labor and the milk with me. You see, that is another reason I haven't kept a milk cow, I don't need THAT much milk.
My neighbor has four boys, she definitely could use some dairy in her life, and the way I milk is only once a day anyway, as I keep the calf on mama, take it off at night, and milk in the morning. It was almost as if the offering of the bottle calves was foretold or something.
Anyway, as my kids are in the middle and high school part of their lives, so I probably won't be doing too much globe trotting over the next five years or so, and thus I jumped right on the potential milk cow scenario.
That said, it has been a couple years since I had a bottle baby moo, and I had to replenish my bottle baby arsenal. Last week I picked up milk replacer, new bottle nipples, electrolytes, and the most important item of all, pectin. Why pectin you might ask? Well, there's this ugly thing that you usually have to deal with any time you have a bottle calf: scours. Pectin dissolved in warm water administered at the first sign of loose stools does wonders!
Mini moo wellness arsenal ready, I found myself actually a bit excited. It had been years since I had tortured myself with caring for a day old creature. The last time I had one I spent two days in the stall with it cradled in my lap, syringing small bits of milk and gel into the poor little thing to bring it up to speed. That was my Flynn, he was glorious.
Now I have these two under my care: Meet Rick and Morticia
Morticia, the little heifer, bounced out of the trailer like a space-walking Russian cosmonaut. I knew she would be fine, and she has been a real corker since she hit the barn at a trot.
Rick however, Rick is a bit of a problem child, but that's because he's a Holstein bull calf. Nuf said.
Morticia needed no instruction on how to nurse from the bottle. Rick, well, let's just say I had to straddle him and hold his head up against my chest. His bottle feeding instruction was a little bit more hands on.
And then this morning, well, Rick was super listless when I went out to feed him, and he had a bowel movement that looks like what is squirted out of a unshaken mustard bottle. The thing about bottle calves is they can go south quick, and die even quicker, so I went right into nursemaid Kat mode and got out my syringe.
I'm happy to say that after operation Solid Poo 4 Moo was enacted that I now have a bouncy, happily eating, much more solid pooping Rick. If I can just get them through the next two weeks without too much drama things will be looking up. Only time will tell.
