Bottle Fed Highland Cows: What You Should Know

We do not intentionally create, sell, or endorse bottle babies.

Scottish Highland cows are exceptional mothers, and we believe healthy calves belong with their mothers whenever possible. Separating a calf unnecessarily, just to create a more human-oriented animal, is not a practice we support, and I strongly condemn it. Breeders who do it intentionally do it out of greed or ignorance, not for the wellbeing of the animal.

We also do not sell intact bottle-fed bulls. Bottle-raised bulls often lose their natural respect for humans because they imprint on their handlers, which can make them dangerous, even deadly, once they reach maturity.

Bottle Babies and the True Story of Baby James

A lot of minis are sold as bottle babies, and that's something I feel strongly about, partly because I helped make bottle babies look cute online. The calf that put my farm on the map was Baby James. He was a dummy calf who was oxygen deprived at birth, and his mama's teats were too big for him to latch on. I didn't know how to tube feed back then, so I fed him with a syringe, and it took about a week before he finally figured out how to nurse.

That's the real reason James was in my house. We didn't have a barn or a proper handling facility for our cattle at the time, and he needed round the clock care. Then we found out his navel hadn't closed at birth and he was urinating through it, so he had to have surgery to correct it. Every time I thought he was through it, he would give me another scare.

Because he needed so much hands-on care, James bonded with me and my dogs. I knew he was still a cow and needed cattle companionship, so I got him a cow friend so he wouldn't be alone. When a media company asked to license his story, I said yes because I wanted people to know what really happened, but the story they sold was about a calf who was rejected by his herd and decided he was a dog. None of that was true, and it got millions of views anyway. I tried to correct it, but people didn't care because the made up version was more entertaining.

I have to own my part in it too. I loved the attention and the followers James brought, and for a while I played into the cute stuff with him and the other orphans I took in over the years. People saw Grace, the bottle baby curled up on my couch next to my hedgehog, but they didn't see that she died about a week later because she never got colostrum at birth. They saw Timmy, a premature calf, living in my house, but not the weeks we spent fighting to save him. I never pulled a calf off its mother for views, but I posted bottle babies without explaining why they were being bottle fed, and I didn't realize how much that kind of content could shape what people want to buy. If I had it to do over, I would never post a bottle baby without a disclaimer.

Sometimes bottle feeding is absolutely necessary, but there's a big difference between keeping a sick or orphaned calf alive and pulling a healthy calf off its mother because bottle babies are cute and sell well. A calf that's small because it was poorly grown or pulled too early isn't a mini, and it may have problems that follow it for the rest of its life.

It's gotten even worse. There are now full on calf puppy mills, where poor quality cattle are cloned and put in surrogate cows, and the calves are taken at birth, bottle fed and sold for crazy amounts of money to people who know nothing about cattle or how to care for them. I've even heard of buyers who had a calf dropped off by the shipper and then had to teach it how to drink from a bottle. That's what the mama cow is for, but because of greed these babies are pulled away and exploited for social media fame, viral videos and "my morning routine with my calves" content that does so much harm to the cattle.

Bottle Baby Auctions Need to Be Called Out

Then there are the auctions. Some sales now offer lot after lot of bottle babies, and some of those calves sell for tens of thousands of dollars. To fill those sales, every single calf is taken away from its mother and auctioned off to the highest bidder. Not because the calf needed help, and not because the cow couldn't raise it, but because a bottle baby brings more money.

That is cruel, and it's being dressed up as cute. A Highland cow is an incredible mother. Taking her calf away at birth, over and over, just to sell it to someone who wants a pet for their videos is not good stewardship. It's exploitation of the cow and the calf.

Even worse, many of these calves are being mass produced. Embryos are made through IVF and cloning and put into surrogate cows, with no thought given to whether those genetics should be reproduced at all. Some breeders are intentionally breeding animals with genetic defects, or stunting calves through malnutrition, withholding protein and other nutrients so they stay small and can be sold as minis. It's the teacup pig trend all over again. Have you noticed these sellers only ever show you calf photos, never a full grown cow? Then buyers are handed bad management advice, and the calf is the one that pays for it. That isn't a breeding program. It's horrible breeding, and these animals deserve better.

And yet so many people are cheering it on. Big name influencers with massive followings buy these calves and keep the cycle going. They fly them around on private jets, film their morning routines with a calf in the house, and share it with millions of people who think that's what owning a Highland looks like. It's all for money, followers and brand deals. Buyers, influencers and even celebrities are supporting these sales and promoting the trend, and every one of those posts makes the next calf worth a little more to pull off its mama.

This needs to be called out, and it needs to stop. The people making money from it aren't going to stop on their own, so it's up to us, the breeders, owners and people who love these animals, to spread the word. Don't bid on bottle babies, don't share the videos that glamorize them, and when you see it happening, say something. If you want a Highland, buy one that was raised on its mother. That is how we change this.

The Danger of Bottle Fed Calves

This is the part people don't want to hear, but it may be the most important thing on this page. A bottle fed calf, and especially a bull, can grow up to be one of the most dangerous animals on a farm. When a calf is raised by people instead of its mother and its herd, it imprints on the people raising it. It never learns that it's a cow, and it thinks the person feeding it is its mother and that people are its herd. That's a problem because cattle aren't gentle with each other. Cows bully each other, push each other around and get rough at the feed trough, and bulls fight. When a bottle baby sees you as one of its own, it treats you the same way, and that can be deadly. A bull gets even worse when he hits sexual maturity, because he's confused about what species he is and what he's supposed to breed with, and if he sees you as another bull, he'll fight you.

Temple Grandin, one of the most respected animal behavior experts in the livestock world, has written about this for years. She explains that a bull calf raised without his own kind can grow up thinking he's a person and try to dominate the people around him, and she recommends raising bull calves with other cattle or on a nurse cow so they learn who they are, and castrating them young. It's the same reason zoos feed baby condors and vultures with hand puppets made to look like adult birds. If a chick imprints on people, it doesn't know it's a bird.

Cattle are herd animals, and raising a bottle calf by itself is one of the worst things you can do. A calf raised alone with no other cattle has nobody to teach it how to be a cow, so people become its herd, and that's exactly how you end up with a dangerous animal. If you do end up with a bottle calf, it needs other cattle around it as soon as possible. That's why I got James a cow friend instead of letting his whole world be me and my dogs.

A mother raised bull is much less likely to see you as competition. Our mother raised cattle are actually sweeter and gentler than our bottle fed ones, and we've been hurt more times by bottle babies than by cattle raised on their mamas. My friend Judy Ligo was almost killed when Bandit, a Highland bull she had bottle fed since he was a few days old, turned on her in the pasture. He broke her neck and ribs and crushed one of the main arteries in her neck. You can read her story in That one day... A bull shattered a farmer's life. The first orphan bull I raised, I sold intact because I didn't know any better, but every one since then, James included, has been castrated, no matter how pretty he was or how much more he would have been worth intact. If someone is selling you a sweet, cuddly bottle fed bull calf, please think about what he'll be when he's full grown.

Want to know more before you buy? Read Mini Highland Cows: What Buyers Should Know and my guide to buying Scottish Highland cattle.