How to Feed a Large Pill to a Small Calf

1/18/2021

When Christmas was stepped on an ended up with a broken foot, the vet wanted us to give her some medication. We saw signs of stress and we weren't sure if there were any internal injuries, so the vet wanted to take some precautionary measures.

The vet sent us home with a rather large pill that we were supposed to give to the calf twice a day.

Normally, we just use a pill shooter, but Christmas was so small we weren't too thrilled with using the large pill shooter. If you have ever used a pill shooter before, you know the cows aren't always thrilled with it...and especially like to spit the pill right back at you.

So, we found another way to give the calf the pill without causing additional stress...for us or the calf.

Walker was in charge of Christmas's care, so he also handled her medication.

A real professional would probably have a mortar and pestle..but we are just simple country folk who use what we have on hand.

Walker placed the pill in a ziploc bag and used a meat tenderizing hammer to smash the pill into a powder.

Pour the powder into a syringe.

As you can see, there is not a needle on this syringe.

Add a small amount of water to a shallow dish.

Pull back on the plunger to allow the water to fill the syringe. There is no specific amount of water that needs to be mixed into the syringe filled with powder. The water just helps to dissolve the powder and allow for easy administration to the calf.

Place the syringe into the calf's mouth and press the plunger to shoot the medicine mixture into the calf's mouth.

As you can see, momma even likes to help.

Christmas was used to us giving her a bottle, so she easily accepted the medication...even though I'm sure it didn't taste quite as good as the milk.

Thankfully, Christmas didn't sustain any internal injuries and the medication helped with some of the stress related issues we were observing.

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