My Bottle Calf, Sam

Living on a farm that raises cattle, inevitably there are calves that might not get the opportunity to be raised by their mother. Whether it be a set of twins that the mother only accepts one, the mother die, or the mother not being able to provide enough milk for the calf to thrive on. When one of those things happen, you will have to raise the calf on milk replacer, and you are essentially their mother then. This year alone, I have had six bottle calves, having four at my house and two at my mammaws. In this blog, I am going to focus on my main calf, Sammie, who is six months old now.

Left to right: Pepper, Sam, Ginger

Sam was born on an extremely cold and snowy day in February, he was a twin and the mom had took his sister and left him huddled up against a rock by himself. My dog was smelling around him and that is what brought my attention to him. He could not hardly stand up by himself, so I got Josh to carry him to the barn and put him into our “sweep” room. He was much more lively than the calf I had just a few weeks prior to then. I kept a blanket on him for almost a month, which took the whole time to actually fit him since he was so little.

I thought nothing could get into that room with Sam but a dog did one night, but he was much more stout than the calf I had the month before.  It ripped his ear very badly and there were some bites on his neck, this ruckus woke me up about 4:30 that morning. The picture below was the morning that I had tried to get the bleeding to stop. I took it off the next evening to see that most of it was torn and I tried to clean it out very well to prevent a nasty infection. I cleaned it everyday with iodine and alcohol, both of which Sam did not like very much. I brought him to the house so he would be closer in the mornings for me to take care of him and he found out how to use stairs to get on the front porch and watch me do my homework. The tip of his ear did eventually fall off, but it healed very well considering it was ripped was a dog.

After his ears started to heal

After his ears started to heal, he became more attentive to the everyday surroundings instead of just ignoring or flinching at every loud noise.  Though there was pain bleats from Sam when I would clean his ear  and an endless amount of exaggerated head slings, Sam still stood strong.  After about two weeks Sam's ear had began to scab over and heal up pretty solidly.  Sam's ear healed up and so did he.  Spoiled is his middle name, even today Sam knows he's got it made. (512)

Now, as of 8/26/16

How It Started

Ever since I was a little kid, I have wanted to be a veterinarian. When I was little I remember wrapping up my dog, Lady, in white pipe thread tape and saying she had a ‘boo-boo’.  The summer of 2014 I had the opportunity to shadow the only actual large animal vet around my area, and I loved it. I was literally his shadow all summer long in surgeries, farm calls, and anything else we did, it made me want to become a vet even sooner than I had before. Recently, the only times I have been able to go to the vet office was when I had an animal to take up there myself, and the last time it was to find out our dog Annie had cancer. Normally though, it is just for routine shots or to get a cat or dog fixed so they cannot have about fifty babies running around for dad to fuss about.

I have been raised on a farm, which has gave me plenty of animals to take care of, not including the ones I picked up, which have happened quite often since I was about eight. I have took care of our cows by vaccinating, delivering stuck calves, trimming lame cows with overgrown hooves, ear tagging, and worming them on a twice a year basis. In the winter, it gets very muddy wherever you feed at and smaller calves are very bad for getting scares, which is basically diarrhea times ten that can kill them if left untreated, depending on the size and health of the calf, anywhere from 1 week to a month is crucial to treat that with scare oblets(diarrhea stopper and antibiotics).

I also feed for my neighbors when they are gone and I usually end up having to treat one of their animals while they are gone since animals are accident prone. For example, about three weeks ago, my neighbors dog attacked their goat and when she told me about it this is what she said, “eh, it’s nothing, it will just have a few scars on its head.” Well, whenever I got out there, it had an abscess on his neck the size of a tennis ball, its ear was hanging a good two inches lower than its other ear, and its cheek was swollen out, all from infection that had set up from four days prior. Luckily, five days of Penicillin shots and a mixture of alcohol and iodine cleared the infection up.