Gee, timely discussion here. We had a first calf heifer calve on Saturday. I did not expect it since she was not due for 5 more days and had no real udder to speak of. We pulled her inside and tubed the calf with colostrum because we were not sure if the cow had milk. The next morning, we put the heifer in the chute and were able to squeeze some milk from all four teats, but she still looked like she had no milk! The calf is sucking often, so that tells me she is hungry, no? We have tried to offer her a quarter bottle twice a day, backing her in a corner and working her jaw on the nipple. Sometimes she takes a few sucks but then refuses and keeps chewing the nipple and spitting it out. When you let her loose, she goes right to the udder and sucks. We have been doing this since Sunday, and finally I called the vet today, who told me to just watch her. If she refuses the bottle, she does not need it (she is not hungry?). Tonight we decided to kick the heifer and calf back out with the group, and within an hour the mom was running around the pasture bawling for her calf. We found the calf had slipped through the hot wire, through the pipe fencing, and back into her warm straw barn because she did not like being out! How funny is that? We put the heifer back in the pen with the calf and when we looked closely at the heifer's udder, it actually looks like she has one, albeit small, which was exciting. We left them in the warm straw barn, and figured we will kick them out tomorrow morning so she can commingle with the other two new calves. We named the calf "hope" because we hope she lives! Her dam is out of some of our best genetics, and by a sire with top milk numbers so no reason why we should be having these problems. How long can it take for the heifers to come into their milk?