Post by sarahb on Apr 16, 2015 17:26:11 GMT -5
Hi, first, thanks for reading :-) I am a bit of a novice and any advice would be much appreciated.
I had a calf born two days ago in the late afternoon. it was breathing and the cow was cleaning him up. As everything seemed normal and the cow was nervous about my presence I left her alone. Had a terrible storm that night and the next morning the calf still wasn't up. His breathing was fast and seemed laboured, the umbilical cord was still leaking and green snot was oozing from his nostrils. I brought him up to the pens to call the vet, but just couldn't convince the cow to cooperate. (She is an older cow we bought and has never been overly cooperative). There was no way I could get her near the pens.
Vet came out and couldn't find anything structurally wrong with him. She assumed his lack of ability to stand was general weakness and a bit of stress, but gave him a long acting antibiotic and tubed him some electrolytes. She had no access to a colostrum source and despite all our best attempts, we couldn't get the cow in to try and milk her.
I put him in a stall and put a dog coat on him and fed him a calf milk replacer every four hours. He's drinking well but still has no ability to use his legs (or even really sit up for long with me propping something behind him). He's completely floppy and his respiration still seems up. I also noticed he'd passed a small amount of meconium and it had some blood in it - is that normal?
We really want to save this little guy. If there's anything I can do other than just keep feeding and hoping for the best, I want to do it. Should I be trying to make him stand? will that do more harm than good? Should I have someone hold him up on his legs when he drinks? Is there any point in trying to access colostrum now that he's 36hrs old? I just don't know what to do.