I got Donna and we drove over to the dairy. The owner lifted the calf onto my pickup's tailgate and I tied it legs together to keep it from jumping out of my pickup bed. I rode in the pickup bed sitting next to the calf as Donna drove back to the ranch. I petted it's back as we rode and the calf liked that. The calf is fine with humans touching it.
Once I got the calf home I banded it to castrate it. Then I went to get Big Red. She was still out in the pasture grieving over her dead calf. I loaded the dead calf onto the pickup bed and slowly drove to the corral. Big Red followed.
Once in the corral Big Red saw the Holstein calf in the loading ramp part of the corral and was interested. We got Big Red into the loading ramp area. She was interested in the calf and ok/friendly with it. But when the calf went to drink from Big Red she would kick it away.
I went to move Big Red into the narrow section of the ramp with the gate. I discovered I had forgotten the gate was broken. Last Fall when I loaded the calves to take to the auction the gate's bottom lag bolt came out of the railroad tie.
So I had to fix the gate. Simple, right? Of course not. This particular railroad tie had a rotted section - that is why the previous lag bolt came out. A longer lag bolt was too large in diameter for the gate hinge. I found a long bolt I could use. I had to get a drill and bit to drill through the railroad. The bit was too short. I got a longer bit, though wider.
Then I found this bolt was a hair too large for the gate hinge. I tried to hammer the bolt into the hinge. The bolt broke at the bend. *Argh!* Then I found one other bolt long enough. I drilled the hinge large enough to just fit the bolt in.
A few other annoyances and eventually I had the gate fixed and hung. Well over an hour later.
While I worked on the gate Big Red came to see what I was doing and would get in the way. Once I was done she had no interest on going to that part of the loading ramp. After some effort we got Big Red into the gated area and then also the calf.
With no room Big Red tried to turn around to look at the calf and possibly get out. I had to get and lift a wooden pallet in this area to eliminate the chance Big Red could turn around.
The calf went to work and drained one side of the Red's full udder. After some effort and pushing and shoving I got the calf to the other side of Big Red and the calf then drained that side of Red's udder.
I let them out into the overall loading corral. They were friendly enough but didn't lay together and Big Red didn't lick or clean the calf. She knew from smell it was not her calf.
It was now 3 pm. At 6:30 pm Donna and I checked on the calf. Big Red's udder was again full of milk. The calf hadn't drank from Red. When the calf went for the udder Red would kick to keep her away. We again put Red in the loading ramp with the gate. This time had Red go up one additional section and then placed several boards behind her. She could not move forward or backward. This section was too narrow to put the calf beside Red but the calf immediately went to work and drank from the back. With the boards Red couldn't kick back at the calf.
The calf drank Red dry again.
For the night we moved the two over to the corral side south of the barn. I put out hay for Big Red in the feeder and they had shelter if they needed it. When I last checked several hours ago the calf as laying next to the corral fence and Red was elsewhere in the corral.
Most likely in the morning I'll have to move Red and the calf back into the loading ramp and repeat this for a while until Big Red allows the calf to drink all the time.
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| Awfully relaxed after just having his balls banded. |
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| Finally drinking |
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| Jumping and kicking up his heels. |
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| Friendly, but not friends. |
A 36 second video of the new calf: https://youtu.be/VyivlAGCdwY
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