This beautiful white bull calf was born two days ago with a challenge that is new to us. He is completely blind. We noticed right away he is afraid of any noises, including those made by other cows. We also noticed that he could not seem to identify which cow was his mother. Consequently he did not nurse, and he kept running away from the herd.

We found him outside the pasture in the blackberry briars one time, and across the field near the bee hives the next time. After 24 hours of this we put him in a pen and brought his mother in with him.

Without food or water for a whole day after being born, the calf was hungry. He accepted a bottle and drank like a champ. However, later in the afternoon when we tried again, he refused the bottle. We think he figured out how to nurse his mother, but we are still keeping an eye on him.

Doc Brown, our veterinarian, was here at noon today. Doc said the blindness is not genetic, or due to any deficiency of vitamins or minerals. He said the calf's nervous system was damaged by oxygen deprivation during birth.

Structurally there is nothing wrong with the calf’s eyes. Sometimes there can be birth defects where part of the eyes are missing, or viruses can cause cataracts. None of those is a problem with this calf’s eyes.

However, just because the eye structure is correct does not mean the eyes work correctly. The calf exhibits a condition called strabismus, meaning the eyes do not align normally. The eyes may turn in, out, up or down, either together or independently of each other.

The calf will not likely outgrow the strabismus. If any vision returns in one or both eyes, his brain will eventually disregard the image from one of the eyes and he will learn to focus the other one. However, neither eye appears to be responding to any visual stimulus at this time, so there is no reason for them to focus.

There is a small chance the calf may gain some percentage of vision, but there are no guarantees. All we can do is wait and watch.

We are planning to keep the calf and his mother penned up together for a couple of weeks. Then we will let them out into the pasture and see how it goes. We will keep you posted.