Newborn calf acting weird

[DLF]

We had a heifer calf born 2 days ago that has acted weird from the start. We had to help her get up and get her nursing. She acted like she was so stiff and when we would try to get her to nurse if we touched her anywhere near the mouth she would just fall flat down. It took awhile but we got her to suck. We still have to get her nursing every few hours. She doesn't nurse long either. She is still acting stiff as a board and when she's up she just does continuous laps around the outside of the stall, round and round. She pays no attention to her mom or anything. There is just something off about her. To look at her she looks perfectly healthy other than acting stiff. We gave her a shot of Banamine yesterday because she acted like she was in pain. She came 16 days late -- at first we thought maybe she was just laying in the cow in a weird position for too long but I think there's more to it. Anyone have anything similar?

 

[simba]

I'm no vet but I'd put money on it being a thiamine (vitamin b1) deficiency. We have had two calves at the farm I'm working at like that this year. We treated the calves with 5cc of thiamine as well as vitamin A, D & E and selenium as soon as we saw the symptoms and then 2cc of thiamine everyday after that until the calf seemed normal. Both calves here looked great after a week but watch them because they can go downhill really fast and they'll need another shot of thiamine. The people I work for told me that it seems to happen randomly (hence us calving 120 cows so far this year and only having 2 affected calves) but that they've had good results with this treatment on the few they've used it on over the years. If I am right you need to get that calf thiamine as soon as possible- I hate to be a downer but it may even be too late although the fact that you could get it sucking means it is already in better shape than ours were at the start. Good luck!