How to Help a Hypothermic Calf

Wondering how to warm up a cold calf? The first thing a hypothermic calf needs is warmth.

Reader Contribution by John Klar
Updated on January 10, 2023
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by John Klar
Farmer with a young bull in front of barn

Wondering how to warm up a cold calf? The first thing a hypothermic calf needs is warmth.

As a general rule, wise animal husbandry discourages bringing animals into a warm building for any period of time when it is very cold outside, unless they are to stay warm until spring — the risk of pneumonia and hypothermia are greater when trying to return a baby to its outdoor mother. This creates a conundrum: an animal threatened by the cold is rescued by warmth; then threatened with death anew.

There are husbandry techniques to counter these wintertime challenges, whether for lambs, goat kids, piglets, or calves. Calves will be used here to survey the myriad complexities involved for all these farm babies.

In 25 years of raising calves of many different beef and dairy breeds, only two calves ever entered the warmth of our house. Their different stories well illustrate the urgent and difficult hurdles to be surmounted when a calf needs emergency rescue.

Rescuing a Winter-Born Calf from Hypothermia

The first was a Hereford bull plunked down one single-digit May morning (in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom tundra) directly into a freezing muddy puddle. His first-time mother was the first of 19 cows to freshen that year, and her repeated stares down the hill led me to investigate — around noontime. The mud-drenched baby flopped like a large brown fish as I drew near, or I wouldn’t have seen him at all.

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