Calf Sitting

Chanda, that's the second method I tried with no luck, but will try again this evening....

I agree with the banding, as long as you can find both "beans" and keep both under the band until they fall off, you're good. I've never had problems with jerseys, just with holsteins, where one bean slips up thru the band and into the abdominal cavity, resulting in a "stag". It sounds like she knows what she is doing. As for the milk, usually once they begin to nibble on solid food they learn to sip water, as they are usually thirsty long before they get their next milk ration. I put the milk in a pail and hang it on the gate so that I don't have to hold the pail while I hold my fingers below the surface of the milk and encourage the calf to suckle my index and middle finger just below the surface of the milk so while suckling, they're slurping. It sometimes takes them a few feedings to get the hand of the slurping without fingers. Once they get it, I walk away once I give them the pail because often they want to play and will head butt the pail if I don't put my fingers in it, but if I walk away, they just drink it. I do have greater difficulty getting jersey calves to drink than I do with any other breed, they seem to be more stubborn. They also do whatever they want it seems. My husband bought me these milk feeders that hang on the fence and have a nipple threaded in the bottom so calves can suckle at will. Some of mine will suck, some prefer to slurp from the top and a few that have learned to "bucket" will get on their knees to reach the nipple and suckle even after "graduating" to bucket. I can't win,so as long as they eat, I no longer care how they do it lol.

Last night I tried something a little different and had some success! I put a small portion of his formula in the feed dish. Set it down and then showed him a small scoop of grain and poured it into the dish. Since he is eating grain now, he went for it! He was doing a combination of chewing and slurping. LOL.

Way to go, little Dude!

Awesome! It's like milk and cereal. Great idea.

My sister bought another bottle baby to keep with her bottle calf. She felt they would fit in better with a herd eventually if they had another of their species.

This brought up a discussion between us: we are both dealing with spoiled horses that were imprinted. We speculated that these two horses never lived in herds. They lived by themselves in pens in an area with horses around them, but not actually in a herd situation, or even a companion horse. So we are thinking that these two bratty boys just never learned how to be horses, and for some reason the imprinting makes them perceive humans as one of them. Both are very disrespectful, though mine is doing much better after over a year of training and having a bossy pasture mate (hers is just a yearling). But mine does not like to be with horses he does not know. It makes him very anxious.

It is not always possible for our horses to live in a herd.

Just some horsey speculation...