Trials of Joy

Sometimes little joys carry their own trials. Our last set of twins may be in trouble. One of them has a fever for sure and the other may but I'll have to check once I finish writing this. One of the twins - ear tag # 27 - is running a temp of 103. 101 - 101.5 is okay. Anything higher is a fever. We talked to the vet and he said he thought that it may have been that they didn't get the colostrum from the heifer because the calves were born to a heifer which generally produces a smaller amount of colostrum, and then adding on that they were twins. Without colostrum, as with any animal that breast feeds, there is only a limited amount of time to get the colostrum to he baby that contains the antibodies that give newborns their immunity boost. We're giving #27 antibiotics but the vet doesn't have much confidence that it will pull through. As long as the twins are taking bottles, and they are, we're still holding out hope. We've never really gotten the opportunity to work that closely with the calves other than bucket feeding Holsteins for a couple of years. The Angus calves are very bonded with their mothers and don't want to get too close to the great predator (us humans). It's still a joy to care for a small calf, even if the outcome won't be recovery for the calf. It reminds us as with everything in life, that we are stewards and we try our best with the abilities we're give and technologies at hand, but the outcome ultimately isn't really up to us.