Exactly one week ago, I spoke with a friend that raises and shows Brahma cattle. He had a heifer that calved on Tuesday afternoon and would not have anything to do with her newborn heifer calf. He asked me on Wednesday if I had a Jersey in milk that would foster her.
Of course I do! I went to get her. She was weak, but had already received some replacement colostrum. Calves are born without an immune system. They get their immunity from that first milk, known as colostrum.
You can purchase powdered colostrum but fresh is best. As soon as I got her back home, we thawed some frozen colostrum from another cow and fed her that. Then we milked the Jersey cow and bottle fed her for a few days to get her strong enough to nurse well.
The red you see on her is iodine spray to keep her navel from getting any infection.
This was on Friday.
Saturday we got her to nurse the cow.
This was her progress by Monday. Very strong and great suckle.
This video is from Thursday. She’s now 8 days old and as healthy as she can be!
We are calling her Jellybean because of her little Brahma hump.
I will update her weekly. She’s so much fun!
Dr Vet Sonya 