Steer toward Recovery March 21st-April 4th

While doing his daily hay feeding dad came across a calf on the ground that wouldn't get it.  He was nearly a week old and he and its mother were already let out into the long term pasture before summer. It was odd it wouldn't get up as it had been running the day prior.  After helping it up we found it wasn't putting any weight onto its back left leg.  We brought him and his mother (#309) up into the sick pen and had the vet, Kelly, come out to look at it.  After looking it over she determined it may have gotten stepped on by a cow.   Due to it not standing on its own we would need to find a sling of some kind to hold up the calf, give it physical therapy to help keep strength up, bring its mother in and milk her out, and then bottle feed the calf until it recovers.  We pulled an old mechanics lift out of the brush, hooked up a chain and a sling and brought it up to the calf.  Actually worked really well.  So we began twice a day bringing the cow up into the chute, milking her out and bottle feeding this calf.  Unfortunately the cow was not impressed with this process and without fail decided she'd prefer to make us make several laps around the pen chasing her before she finally would go up to the chute by her calf.  Thankfully she milked out fairly well and wouldn't kick.   Here's a video of Ivy bravely doing the bottle feeding: 

And Salem giving it a go:

After about two weeks of this the calf was slowly able to nurse his mother on his own, and was able to bear weight and eventually lost the limp!  By April 7th he had progressed to walking:

And by April 15th he had a little skip in his step:

We had a different calf die who had a birth defect or injury to its front legs around this same time, so it was encouraging to have been able to help this little steer on a path to recovery!