Ongoing Drama

We had a calf born Thursday morning that couldn't get up on its own.  I tubed it that morning and evening.

 J carried it to the barn the next day.

 He claims he is getting to old to do this.

 But the calf still never acted normal. 

  We had tried to get it to nurse by putting the cow in the chute

 but it just couldn't do it.

We ended up milking the cow and bottle feeding the calf.   Sometimes it was very twitchy, then it would run into the wall.  The last straw was when it had a full blown seizure yesterday.  My tentative diagnosis is cerebellar hypoplasia,  a condition where the brain does not form normally and from which there is no recovery.  We had to make a decision to humanely euthanize him since it didn't look like things were likely to improve. 

 We still had our calf where the cow died, so we are now attempting to graft him on to this cow.

 She was fine in the chute

 The rope is to keep her from swinging out sideways.

 But outside, she didn't want anything to do with him.

 So for the time being, they are back in the barn, in a smaller pen.

Looks like we will have a job for awhile longer.  By the way, we have had over 30 born so far without all this drama.