This calf is not small, she’s fun-sized!

We just keep getting surprises here at Hansen’s Dairy.

Three months after our surprise first set of surviving triplet heifers, now we have another unique calf.

Coffee Bean, a full-blood Wagyu calf, weighed only 20 pounds at birth. Here she is compared to a normal-sized calf born the same day.

This cute little calf was born on Aug. 27, weighing in at only 20 pounds. She is a full-blood Wagyu beef cow, the result of an embryo transfer (carried by surrogate mother who is a Holstein). A normal Wagyu calf weighs around 65 pounds.

Glacier was the surrogate mother of the full-blood Wagyu calf that weighed only 20 pounds.

As soon as the mother, Glacier, started giving birth, herd manager Blake Hansen knew something wasn’t right. A normal cow going into labor usually has udder swelling and softening of ligaments around the birth canal, which didn’t happen with Glacier. She was also nine days overdue, so this baby was not premature.

Soon enough, this little peanut was born. We first thought she had a form of dwarfism, but usually cattle with this condition have disproportionately short legs. She looks like a normal calf, just a miniature version! We decided to name her Coffee Bean. Check out a couple videos of her on our Instagram page.

She does have one abnormality though — her lower jaw is shorter than her upper jaw, so she has an extreme overbite. Blake fed her with a kangaroo bottle nipple because it’s longer and narrower, which seemed to fit her mouth just right. She looks like a little fawn, with her small stature and narrow nose.

Coffee Bean was born with a jaw abnormality. Her lower jaw is exceptionally short, which gives her an extreme overbite.

The first night, we kept her in the house just to monitor her. She spent the night in a laundry basket. 🙂

Coffee Bean spent her first night in the house. Most normal sized calves don’t fit in a laundry basket!

The next day she hung out in our front yard. She looked like a puppy sitting there! She was walking, but certainly not very fast so we weren’t concerned about her escaping. She’s grown stronger with each day, and Blake decided to put her in the kangaroo pen so he could watch her more closely than having her with the rest of the calves in the huts. It’s been fun watching how the kangaroos respond to this new creature in their pen.

One of these things is not like the other! Scooter, our female kangaroo, checks out Coffee Bean, our new Wagyu calf.

So, it will be interesting to see if Coffee Bean grows into a normal sized cow or if she will always be miniature. One thing is for sure, she has a fighting spirit and has been seen kicking up her heels in the kangaroo pen!

Just another day taking care of creatures great and small here at Hansen’s Dairy!

Herd manager Blake Hansen feeds Coffee Bean, a super small Wagyu calf, by kangaroo bottle. The longer, narrower nipple fits her mouth better than a normal calf nipple.