A little better

Calfy drank her entire quart on her own!! She is still a pretty messy eater - she doesn't hold her tongue quite straight yet, but it is getting better. Hopefully, she will get the hang of eating on her own soon and then she can be a bottle baby that the kids can help feed.

DD does a wonderful job of petting/massaging the baby calf to encourage her eating and rubbing her the right way encourages the calf to do her business as well.

Below is a picture of Izzy sleeping with the calf. Calfy likes the other animals with her or lying down next to the stove - the noise helps her relax better than any tv channel we get. (actually, everyone is pretty tired of the tv being on these days).

Calfy is still going

She didn't want to nurse much this morning, so we had to tube her again. However, between 2 and 5 am, she was very active and walking around, so hopefully she will feel more active later on today and feel like nursing.

She is asleep again - she notices slight temperature changes, so we have an additional blanket for her this morning. It was -14 when I was outside, so the basement is a bit colder than normal.

Well - her is hoping that she soon feels like walking around and acting like other baby calves soon.

A big hurdle passed?

Calfy drank her entire 9:30 pm feeding on her own!!! That brings her total up to an entire bottle into her today - 1/3 of which was completely on her own :) :) :)

Let's hope this continues with her next feeding as well. Less time for scrapping this evening - she wants to be up and walking - which is good, but means we have to keep a pretty close eye on things (there is one portion that is on raw concrete/off her cow mat that is slippery for her to walk on).

She is still wearing her Udder Tech blanket :)

Calfy is still going

She needs to be watched (basically because she is indoors). She is more stable when she walks and is doing her "duties" with regularity. She has been trying to figure out nursing/sucking, but hasn't returned to full understanding.

She sleeps about 18-20 hours per day, approximately 2 hours at a time. This past time, she got up, did her thing, then wanted to suck on anything nearby. I worked with her for about 20 minutes with two different bottle nipples, but she only took in 2 ounces. So, it was a feeding tube again. Hopefully, by continually working every time she gets up, we can get her to either nurse from a bottle, or even just slurp everything up out of a bucket.

Though she is inside, she still needs a blanket when sleeping - otherwise she starts to get cold and shiver. So, we keep going, one day at a time.

The Wii fit that was a Christmas gift has been coming in handy to help us track her weight. (however, she is listed as a little dog on the screen :))

On a good/positive note - I have had more time to work on swaps. I have a few completed. If you do scrapbook swaps over at scrapbookingfun.biz, and want to be surprised, don't scroll any further :). The images are not exact - the one for the Christmas Past is my copy - I didn't like the glimmer mist on the edges, or the background being that large and distressed, so the actual ones coming out are a bit different (and have one more piece). The others are from the Love Bandit Swap and it is just a sample set of pages. They all vary just a bit.

Just keep going

Not sure - calf keeps getting up and walking around. She does her business but will not nurse. We had to use a feeding tube again - I don't like using, but if she won't eat with another method - not sure what else to try. She doesn't want to slurp out of a bucket either.

She looks a smidge better this morning, so we will see.

Current weight: 61 pounds (our calves usually weigh between 90 and 110 when they are born)

Still living

Well - we had to tube feed the calf this morning. She still gets up and walks around, but does not want to nurse anymore (started last night). Her temperature is exactly what it should be, so now we do whatever we can to encourage her to keep on going. We are pretty sure she was born too early now, so it is just tlc. She did start to moo last night - only the second time she has made any noise (first time was outside).

So far, so good

The little calf is coming along. She sleeps a lot, but eats "aggressively" - meaning, she goes after her bottle. She will most likely stay a bottle baby - her mom has been letting other calves nurse now. She is not yet ready to return outside. I hate the idea of making her coat not as good, but since having a live calf is most important at the time, she will remain indoors, moving into a heated garage once she becomes more active.

So far, she gets up to eat, do her business (not too hard to catch with bucket or whatever as she isn't active as normal calves are), stands and walks slowly about her enclosure for about 15 minutes, then lays back down to take another nap. Her color is good and she is sleeping in more of a normal position, though she still gets the pillow next to her to be sure she doesn't roll off her mat and onto the concrete floor.

I am hoping it only takes a few days - I know when we brought in a lamb (6 months old) that was cold, she slept for almost two days before returning to normal. It took her about a week of recovery. We have just been using similar steps to help revive the animals as would be done with a human.

Calfy no longer shivers and doesn't have a blanket anymore. Respiration is normal as is temperature. Now her body needs time to allow food to go to more than just maintenance. Hopefully within the week she will be back up and normal. If she does end up as a permanent bottle baby, more pictures will come.



Izzy has adjusted to the calf living indoors, she is no longer completely afraid. Now the only issue (other than time and tlc) for the calf is the screen we had to put in front of the fireplace to be sure she doesn't touch the front (it get's hot and we don't want her to burn herself as she is not 100% stable on her legs yet).



Oh - calfy will eventually get a name, however, until we are sure she will survive, we won't choose one. She can now stand up without help again, so her signs are continually improving.

Doing Better

Yesterday - the calf was up and nursing. The vest was on because we knew it would be cold at night and wanted to help her out a bit.



Hypothermia and a calf - never a good thing. However, when you are born at -10 and your mom is a 1st calf heifer who doesn't want anything to do with you - life can really be tough. She was good the first 24 hours, but the last 18 have not been good.

Baby calfy looked about dead, but she is coming along - warming her up slowly this is an hour or so after bringing her in. We found her laying out flat in the field, away from the rest of the herd. She wasn't frozen, but she was not very responsive either, and the inside of her mouth was cold. In the photo, she has a vest (heated in dryer for 10 minutes first) on her, then a heating pad, then another pad and finally the kitty blanket to keep out any drafts.



3 hours later - when offered a bottle again - she got right up to eat!!! That is a wonderful sign! She is still shivering - but after walking around (very limited area - boy am I glad I said no on the new flooring for now :)) - she found the same spot as the lamb - in front of the warm air from the fireplace. We can't leaver her alone in the basement, but she is beginning to recover. After a meal, she is now wearing just the calf pad (Udder Tech, Inc.)


and now it is back to nap time - still no where near 100%, but after a full tummy - get back in a nice warm spot for a nap.


Oh - and Izzy (the lamb who went through this a few weeks ago) is doing much better, though not amused that she must remain in her kennel and that the small pen has been given to the calf




Queen Izzy, chewing her cud, after removing the dog from a chair - she is afraid to be on the floor with the calf (who is too busy sleeping to even consider the lamb)

Just found this and want to be able to find it again :)

Been working on all sorts of Christmas things - a few pics, but no indicators of who they are for:

Journal Spots

Journalling spots seem to be all the rage these days. In a recent issue of Creating Keepsakes, there was an article about creating your own, using supplies on hand. This is my second result. My first result turned out rather poorly, trying to line up punches with specific patters is a bit more difficult that I thought. However, lining up punches is way easier than taking close-up photos LOL The journal spot is setting on a piece of white paper.




I will be offering the above journal spot as a make and take over at Scrapbookingfun.biz for a while. Quantities are limited.

Snowy Monday Morning

So much for the weather system not containing enough moisture to create real snow - lol. Woke up to the picture below:



Good day to stay indoors and work - wish I had that chance :) Instead, there were errands to run and such. I have been busy with swaps - here are some paper piecing pieces created with cricut cartridges - they have been a blast. I would have liked to ink the snowman, but my samples that were inked just didn't look the way I wanted.