Calves can be real Houdinis. Our first born here disappeared a few hours after birth. We could find her anywhere, and we looked for hours, even checking outside the fence. After five or six hours, and this wasn't a big pasture, we were convinced that a mountain lion had bagged the calf. We were standing, quite despondent, at a higher part of the pasture, and I noticed that the mom had her nose point across the fence into the 3-5' tall grass in the adjacent grass lands. As they say, "Hope springs eternal", and we hustled down to where the mom was and I started tracking along the fence, finally finding a tiny trail leading about a hundred feet into the adjacent grass, where the calf was curled up, dozing. Being new to cattle, we had a heck of time getting the calf back across the fence. My wife got a severe burn from the electric fence wrestling the calf through.
Then the fun began. The calf was annoyed at having been disturbed and starting walking off. One of the other cows was following the calf, but not the mother. It was a three stooges / "Green Acres" act for about six hours with disappearing calves, mothers jumping fences that they haven't jumped before or since, blowing fog, (ever try to find a black and white cow in fog? You can't they are invisible until you are practically touching them), and a half mile trek by the calf across a 45 degree slope to its new favorite place to curl up. All in all it was a twelve hour saga that ended at two am.
Can you say total amateurs? You betcha. I will say that we did get better with experience, but when most of my cattle running neighbors have ranch sizes in the tens to hundreds of thousands of acres, I make no claims to any sort of true expertise.
We use our dogs now to find calves; the dogs love it, and seem to completely understand that the goal is to find the calf, and then stay behind while the calf gets gently steered back into the pasture. Once, one of our dogs found a calf curled up under a bumper pull trailer. I would not have thought that there was room, but apparently there was. Very cosy. I would never have found the calf.
Sixteen years later, we still have the mom. She is our favorite cow. She gave birth two years ago to a gorgeous bull, now standing stud for a new belted Galloway breeder. We think that she is at least nineteen.
All the best,
Peter