Panic

I walked into the shop to feed the calf this morning and gave him my usual greeting.   He didn't respond.  I turned on the lights.

Still no response.

I went over to his pen and I could see his mouth moving and he was on his side with his eyes slightly rolled back.  He had no response to my louder greetings.

As panic began to set in, I went into his pen and scratched his neck, played with his ears, and poked his ribs.  No response except for a weak head movement and some idle mouth movements.  His eyes were still rolled back a little and his neck was mostly limp.

The dog, Sadie, felt like something was wrong and she gave a little whine.

The calf jerked his head up, got up, and started running around the pen with the familiar milk-crazed look in his eye and eventually back to harassing me for my nonexistent udder.

Well-played, calf.  Well played.

Right now, he's drinking about a gallon and a half of milk a day and is still hungry.  We've got a product called Calf Magic for him to start creep-feeding as he is so inclined. He's also starting to learn about drinking from buckets.

His first few attempts at the water bucket involved him snorting lots of water into his nose, then blowing it back out, then smacking his head against the back of the bucket, looking for an udder.  It was pretty intense, and funny.

I'll post some video once I get a chance to cut the video I recorded into reasonable snippets.