On May 12 I wrote about a calf that was born with a possible brain injury. He’d come on a nice day but he was a big calf out of a second-calver and he came backwards. He seemed to be alert and healthy, but he couldn’t get up. It was hard to tell for sure, but he seemed to have a profound lack of strength and/or coordination in his back end.
Despite tube feeding and other support measures he weakened and died within 72 hours.
On May 13 a heifer calf, number 768, was born and seemed to be completely normal. Her mama was from the same group of black whiteface cows we purchased in February, and this was her third calf. The calf was up and nursing within a few minutes of birth and for the first three days she seemed completely healthy. She traveled around the pasture with her mama and had no difficulty following along when we moved the herd about two miles to a different pasture.
We had some cold and damp weather on May 16-17 and woke to snow on the ground on May 18. That morning the calf in question was down and chilled. I warmed her in the pickup and tubed her with warm milk replacer. She recovered from the chill within an hour or so, but she couldn’t get up.
I relocated the cow and calf to the barn to keep the calf out of the wet and to monitor her progress.
For the first couple of days she couldn’t stand at all. She seemed otherwise healthy and was bright and alert, but seemed very weak in the back end and with very little purposeful coordination of those back legs.

She couldn’t get up or stand to nurse. I milked the cow out each morning and the calf readily took the milk from a bottle.
The calf seemed to be gaining strength and coordination, but not as quickly as I’d have liked. I worried about her developing pneumonia or pressure sores and infection.
I rigged up a sling and began slinging her up three to four times a day. Each day she gained strength in her back legs but she still had a problem with coordination. After a couple of days of this, however, she figured out how to stand on her own, and the next day she was able to totter over to her mama and nurse. I still had to help her get up, because she hadn’t yet figured that out.
She had a bit of a setback after nursing, though, because she ate too much and had a tummy ache for a couple of days.
This last couple of days she’s continued to get stronger and to gain in coordination to the point where she can almost get up on her own.
I’m hoping she’ll master getting herself up over the next few days and get to the point where she and her mama can rejoin the herd.
This has been a puzzling malady and a bit hard to deal with. The vet is puzzled as well, and prescribed vitamin/mineral injections. Whether those helped or not is hard to tell. But we do seem to be making progress.
I’m wondering if the calf suffered a viral illness, which caused the weakness and motor disruption. It’s unlikely I’ll ever know for sure.
It’s been an interesting experience, quite puzzling and at times vexing, but it’s also been rewarding to see the calf respond positively -- albeit slowly.
The calf isn’t recovered yet and, though things are looking positive, there’s no way to know at this point how it will all turn out. We’ll just keep hoping for the best.