It must be Destiny

February 18th this year I was rushing out to work as usual throwing out some hay to my cows in the half darkness. I start work at 7am and thanks to daylight savings at this time of the year the sunrise is after 7am so it was only half light when the cows came rushing for the hay and I spotted they had left something small and black behind. It was just big enough to be too big for a cow pat and then it struggled to stand up on rubber legs. I rushed out to investigate and found the smallest calf I had ever seen. A lovely polled, black, purebred female, where did that come from, as this mob was the just mated or empty cows. I checked out the cows still at the hay and found Bergia with dangling membranes, she was the one that had been back to the bull six weeks ago and judging by that and she was under weight showing no signs of pregnancy, thought she must be empty. I quickly got mother and calf out to the yards and tried to raise the calfs temperature, as it was a cold, overcast and windy morning. I phoned work and asked if they could do without me and they could, thank goodness. A calculation for when Bergia, a heifer, had been with the bull approx nine months ago made this calf six weeks prem unless the other polled bull had mated her without our knowledge. The mother must have received a serious knock from one of the others in that mob. It was touch and go as the calfs initial temperature was 34.4C. Slowly it began to rise and I milked some 60 mls of colostrum from the mother and fed it to her with a marsupial teat. The sun was coming out now and the hay shed was in the sun and blocking the wind so we transferred in there where it was warmer. I gave Bergia some raspberry leaves and hay to eat and soon she passed the afterbirth but she had little udder development and tiny teats like an alpaca udder, how was she going to feed this calf? Luckily Bergias mother Wisteria was still in milk as we had just taken her calf away the day before and she is usually my milking cow. Weighing the calf we found she was 6.5 kg so determined she was going to need 650mls of milk daily (10% of bodyweight). Wisteria was very giving so there was milk for the house as well. Bergia was concerned about her calf and wanted to be near her but appeared to be in shock had no idea what to do. The calf we nick named Daisy-mae was so little and floppy that she could not reach her mothers teats or hold her neck extended to feed. We held her up to drink the colostrum every few hours. She was bow-legged and knock-kneed but she could stand and walk a short distance. We were told she would be very unlikely to survive. We have a well-fenced grassed dog yard behind the house about the size of a large suburban back yard where we put Bergia, Daisy and Wisteria. Daisy could reach grandmas teats because she is a shortleg but Wisteria was not keen.

The dogs have a single bed sized day bed under the verandah in the yard which was taken over by Daisy propped up with elbow pillows and comfy rugs. Feeding with a bottle every four hours day and night to start with and helping her to try and drink off mum as well. On the second day mid morning I came out to feed Daisy her second feed for the day and she was already drinking off her mum. She might survive! By four days she was 9.5 kg. During the night she was now getting up off the bed and wandering around so we worried she would get cold and borrowed a dog coat from work to keep her warm, it was toy poodle sized. During the day we had to keep a close eye on her in case she fell asleep in the sun and got overheated. She continued on four hourly feeds topped up by mum for a week then three feeds approx 300ml- early am feed, 2pm and 9pm for nearly three weeks till she was 14kg. Two other cows calved the 11th march and so Daisy and family graduated out of the dog yard to a slightly bigger paddock so they all could be together. These calves were already bigger than she was as they were bull calves born 26 and 27 kg. We were feeding only one feed a day of about 600ml mother giving her the rest but in May we felt she need more so we fed her twice a day 650 ml until we dried Wisteria off in the first week in June.

Daisy (Destiny) compared to a 30cm ruler and with her mother Bergia

On the second of April we celebrated Daisy attaining 20kg weight and stopped worrying so much about her then she got a grass seed in her eye and it caused her eye to go cloudy so there was more fuss and medication but it finally came good. She is a very friendly little calf now and is still small but so is her mother genetically. It is now October and Bergia is still feeding her calf and has quite a decent udder and Daisy has been DNA tested confirming her sire and that she was 6weeks premature. We were very lucky to have saved her or even to have spotted her there in the first place. She has been named Damolock Destiny because she was destined to be here.