Unexpected Overnight Guest

Our first calf was born last friday and it is not doing great.  We have witnessed the little calf drinking from her mom a couple of times but she is skinny and always seems to be hanging her head.  The final decision has been made for the momma...she will have to leave our wonderful herd!  The first year we calved she either lost or hid her calf for a couple of days making us believe she abandoned it and the coyotes got it, and then miraculously the calf reappeared!  Last year her calf looked the same as this one does so Jared brought the momma into the squeeze so he could force the calf the drink from her.  This resulted in the cow kicking the calf and breaking its leg, so Jared had to shoot the calf.  This year she seemed to be a better mom until Jared took a closer look at her calf and noticed she was quite lethargic and really skinny.  He brought the calf and her momma into the corral where they would be forced to stay together.  Jared took a closer look at the momma's utter and noticed that the teats were very skinny and shrivelled looking, it really didn't look like they had been nursed from.  So Jared put her in the squeeze again to see if he could milk her.  He tried and tried and tried but to no avail there was no milk.    The little calf seemed to be getting colder by the minute so Jared made a box for her and brought it into our house!

Lesson learned...do not let your children play with the camera....the lens is filthy!!

So tonight we have an unexpected overnight guest!  The kids thought it was hilarious that we have a calf sleeping inside our house!  But they all pitched in to warm her up by rubbing her fur with towels and keeping her covered while I used a heat gun to blow hot air on her.  We fed her another milk replacement bottle and feel we succeeded in raising her core body temperature enough to keep her alive.

When Jared first brought her in the inside of her mouth was cold to the touch, after rubbing her with towels and blowing hot air on her and giving her another batch of warm milk the inside of her mouth feels just as it should, warm!  Hopefully all our efforts will not be worthless, she is a pretty little heifer, all red!