This is Clem the bull calf at home with his owner, Lyndsay Berglund. She came to the rescue when he was born very prematurely last September at Lakeview Dairy on Maple Hill, owned by Lyndsay’s dad, David Berglund. Lyndsay has a degree in farm operation and management with an emphasis on dairy farming and helps her dad out with sick animals. She said Clem almost didn’t make it. Clem has turned into a household pet for now and is paying Lyndsay back with undying devotion.
Clem is a very lucky bull calf. He was born very prematurely on September 17, 2011 at Lakeville Dairy on Maple Hill, and his twin didn’t make it. Fortunately for Clem, Lyndsay Berglund, daughter of dairy owner David Berglund, had the training, the determination, and the heart to keep him alive. Inside her house.
Clem, short for Clementine, is a Holstein mix born to a cow named Peaches whose children have all been given fruit names. Lyndsay estimates he may have been born only seven months into what would ordinarily be a nine-month pregnancy. He had baggy skin, really fine fur, and was just “skin and bones,” Lyndsay said. “He was so premature he didn’t have any swallowing or sucking reflexes.”
When Clem was born, he weighed 25 pounds, way under the 75-100 pounds of a full-term calf. Lindsay’s dad called her over and asked for help.
Lyndsay has a two-year degree in farm operation and management with an emphasis on dairy farming from Ridgewater College in Willmar, Minnesota. She moved out of the county for a while but came back four years ago to fulfill her lifelong dream of being a dairy farmer. She helps her dad and his wife Heidi as needed, tending to sick animals especially, and gets paid in milk.
After Clem was born, Lyndsay tried to feed him his mother’s colostrum. After she realized he couldn’t swallow yet, Lyndsay drizzled electrolytes down his throat for a couple of days. She kept him by the woodstove in her kitchen with blankets and water bottles to keep him warm, but he was still cold. He was too little for a normal calf bottle (what full-term calves get fed from), so he started on a human baby bottle, drinking his mother’s milk. Eventually he graduated to a larger nipple used for goats. At about two months, he was able to drink out of a pail and started eating grain.
Usually calves can walk the day they are born. It took Clem four or five days, with help from Lyndsay, but he couldn’t get to his feet without help until he was about a week old. It was not an easy road for Clem.
“We almost lost him many times,” Lyndsay said. He had an infection at the site of his umbilical cord and required penicillin. He got pneumonia and had to go on tetracycline. “I slept with him every night just to make sure he kept breathing,” Lyndsay said, adding that she sometimes had to squeeze his chest to help him get the fluid out of his lungs. She would wake up and find him with his head on her pillow, his big dark eyes staring at her.
“He wasn’t in the house just because it was fun,” Lyndsay said. Without the extra warmth, special feeding, and medication, “he would be dead.”
Other bovine buddies
The Berglund family nursed another premature calf to maturity years ago. Her name was Hilary, and Lindsay’s grandparents, Ginger and Palmer Berglund, kept her in their basement until the weather was warm enough for her to be out in the yard on a leash. She lived to be 17 and died tragically, along with her new calf, at the hands of wolves.
When Lyndsay was growing up, she had a cow named Teddy. Lindsay had her senior photos taken with Teddy, who lived to be 21. Cattle can easily live to be over 20 years old, Lyndsay said. “They look like old grandmas when they get old,” she said. “They’re so cute!”
On big dairy farms, cows are allowed to birth a couple of calves and are then slaughtered at about age 3. On the Berglund farm, they are allowed to live out their natural lives. They can keep producing calves and milk throughout their life span.
Wolves are a problem, walking boldly onto the farm and around all the farm buildings. “We lose handfuls of animals every year to timber wolves. They have no fear,” Lyndsay said. “They sit out in my dad’s yard and watch him eat breakfast.” Regarding the delisting of wolves off the endangered species list, Lindsay said, “There has to be a balance.”
Clem’s destiny
Throughout the fall, Clem started spending time outside. Lyndsay’s partner Kent started thinking having a bull calf inside their house was a bit ridiculous, so he told Lyndsay she could keep him in the basement as long as she could carry him up and down the stairs. She made it until Clem was about 125-130 pounds and almost four months old. Kent is still trying to see how long he can carry Clem. “We’ll let you know!” Lyndsay said.
In order to pave the way for Clem to join the outside world, Lyndsay’s grandpa, Palmer Berglund, and Kent’s father, Wayne Anderson, fixed up a shed for him. Some of the boards they used came from the old Maple Hill schoolhouse. When the “grandpas” were working on his barn, Lyndsay said, Clem was “helping.”
After Clem has been put outside during the day, he sometimes sneaks into the house and lies down on the dog bed. His first night in his own space was January 8. “He did really good,” Lyndsay said. “I was a mess!”
Clem does like people. He follows them around inside the house and follows both people and dogs around outside the house. “We go for walks every day,” Lyndsay said.
“My plan for Clem? I want to train him to be an ox,” Lyndsay said. Oxen are domesticated cattle, often castrated males, trained as draft animals. Clem’s parents are large, but Lyndsay isn’t sure how large Clem will be since he was so premature. She expects him to get up to at least 1,200 pounds, however.
“He’s not just spoiled,” Lyndsay said, “he’s lucky, too!”
says Lyndsay Berglund.
Here’s the lowdown on bovines:
Cow – a mature female who has had a calf
Heifer – a young female who has not had a calf
Bull – a male, not castrated
Steer – a castrated male
Calf – a baby bovine
Ox – a bovine used for pulling things, usually a castrated male
. Dairy cattle are bred year-round so that milk is available at all times. Females have a 60-day period each year when they are not milked, but otherwise, they are milked throughout the first seven months of gestation and after they have had their calves. They have two uteri and go into heat every month.
. Beef cattle are generally bred so that calves are born in the spring and can get fattened up over the summer. Bulls intended for meat rather than breeding are turned into steer because steer are easier to handle and make better meat.
. Both males and females can have horns, but it is dependent on their genetic line. Some farmers de-horn their cattle, and some breed the horns out of their herds.
. Cattle do not have upper teeth.
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