One of the mommas delivered twins early this morning, one boy and one girl. She chose the little girl and pushed the boy away. Only thing to do is bottle feed. BIL came to get him and will take him back to West Fl where he and his two boys will take turns with the bottle. I guess that’s just nature and the mom can only sufficiently feed one calf.
The only similar experience I can recall was back in my early teens on my granddaddy’s tobacco farm where he kept a few head of cattle and a mule for busting the middles and pulling the dust gun in the tobacco shade. One momma delivered a little male calf and the mule, for whatever reason, decided it wanted the calf and ran the momma off. The calf would try to nurse, the mule allowing it to try, but of course to no avail. Grandaddy made arrangements for the calf to go with a guy close by who ran a big herd, but he’d only take him if the calf was cut.
The plan was to separate the calf and the mule, then I would help my older cousin with the castration while my granddaddy kept the mule penned up. After getting the mule on the other side of the fence, we got the calf on its back, me straddling and holding the back legs. My cousin cut the sack and then cut the testes…just in the nick of time as the mule went crazy when the calf started hollering. It wound up busting through the fence and came after me and my cousin. Luckily, it settled down once the calf came to it. Never seen anything like it since.
Nature, I guess, can be a strange thing sometimes. The little male calf of the twins was well formed with no apparent problems. He was just unlucky where his momma’s choosing was concerned.