Alright, Jessie again. : )
So, last week I told a story about #28 and #44 who both had calves overnight and somehow (I have NO idea how) they both only wanted #28’s calf. Neither of them would take #44’s calf, even though we brought it over and tried hard to get his mama to want him. (She actually got rather violent with him, headbutting him completely through the fence, which is pretty much when we decided we didn’t want him to die and quit trying to get his mom to love him.)
Now, sometimes these things happen for a reason, I guess, since #44’s calf, (I called him Rhu-Rhu, but the girls named him Sid) wouldn’t suck. He couldn’t have survived with a mom, anyway, since I had to dump his bottle down his throat for almost a week and a half before he started to eat.
That in itself was a major blessing.
Then, earlier this week, we had a cow (one of Jacob Glick’s cows – you all remember Jacob, right? lol) who had twins! They were both born alive, and when we first saw them, one was looking for her breakfast, while one was on the ground in front of the cow and she was licking it off. It appeared she was going to accept both of them.
That day, we had our vet coming because one of Jacob’s other cows was having trouble with her calf. It died shortly after the vet got there.
While the vet was there, our whole spring herd came down off the hill, down to the bottom by the creek while the vet worked on the calf that eventually died.
When he and Watson went looking for the twins, only one of them was with its mother. It turned out the other one had apparently followed the herd down to the creek and was now about a mile away from its mom.
The vet suggested the twins would do better if we took the mom that just lost her calf and put that little twin bull on her.
Alright, I need to pause right here and say, if you’re eating your breakfast right now, you might want to stop reading until you’re done. If you don’t like blood and guts, you also might want to stop reading, and if you prefer not to know all the hard things that happen on the farm, this is not the story for you. But, I do promise there is a very happy ending that will give you all the warm fuzzies, so if you make it through the hard parts, the ending is worth it (a lot like life, isn’t it?).
They grabbed the twin and put him on their laps in the Gator. Pie got Sham, her horse, and they tied a rope to the dead calf. She dragged it up from the bottom, the mama cow following and bawling, but it was the best way to get her away from where it died. If you just take the calf and the mom doesn’t see it, they have a tendency to just stay where it died and bawl.
They took the dead calf, with the mama following, to the pen behind the barn. Then the vet took the dead calf and carefully skinned it, taking the hide from the shoulders down to both knees, clear down to the belly, both hind legs to the knees and getting the entire tail. They put two holes on both sides, then used bailer twine to attach the “coat” to the twin calf.
After they got the “coat” on, they put the twin in the pen with the mom who had just lost her baby, and she took him right away. It’s not easier than pixie dust, but it works a LOT better on the mom.
Now, I think I had mentioned in my last newsletter that Julia said how things had been busy, but nothing was dying. Well, that was dumb of me to repeat, because we lost a second calf Wednesday.
This one was an embryo heifer and we knew it was struggling. I told Watson to bring it up to the side pasture and I’d take care of it, but I was trying to get a book written (I really considered cancelling my deadline. If I had, we wouldn’t have lost that heifer, which makes me feel guilty, but people depend on me to write, and I don’t want to let those people down) and I didn’t go down to take care of her – I left it up to Watson. He can drive anything, but he’s not really an animal person.
Anyway, he finally brought her up to the side pasture Tuesday night, but when I fed her, I could tell she wasn’t going to make it. She was dead Wednesday morning.
Tuesday night I turned my book into my editor and decided I was going to take Wednesday off. So, Wednesday morning I said to Watson we should put Sid on the cow who was out in the side pasture, standing over her dead baby, licking her and bawling.
Watson said it would never work, and he gave a bunch of reasons that didn’t convince me of anything.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a little stubborn, and I don’t take very well to being told I can’t do something. Also, as much as I love bottle feeding calves (actually, Pie stole my job and SHE was bottle feeding my babies), calves always do better – they grow better and are healthier – when they are raised by a mama cow.
So, I had a little conversation with my daughter. When the vet is here, Pie is always at his elbow, and she’d watched what he’d done the day before, and how it had worked so well. We talked about it a bit and we were pretty sure we could do it ourselves.
She got her horse, tied a rope to the dead calf, dragged it over to the barn and the mom followed, charging our dogs a couple of times and actually charging Pie’s horse as well. Thankfully, she hit him in the rear end, and he didn’t even look around to see what happened. She did get one of our dogs and rolled him on the ground. He was able to squirm and miss her hooves and Pie and I got her attention back on us when we yelled at her, so she ended up not hurting him too bad, but I think he’ll stay on the porch the next time we have an angry mama cow in the yard.
So, we got the mama into the pen. Thankfully, Pie is pretty agile and is able to climb fences fast. I’m less agile, but still quick enough to get out of the way. : )
Then, yeah, Pie and I skinned the dead heifer calf. I wanted to say a word about this, because if I think about it, I couldn’t do it. Same for Pie. (Julia stood back, keeping Sid occupied.) I really think that this, with pretty much everything else in life, is a mind game. I don’t think about how sad it is that the poor heifer died, or how sweet she was or how terrible it is that I’m cutting into her. My brain shuts that part off, and I think about how I want to do the very best I can at getting as much of the hide as possible, no holes, no extra flesh, nothing that might make Sid’s new mom reject him. I showed Pie how to use the knife to feel between the vertebrae to find the crack between them where it would be easier to cut through and get the tail with the hide. You don’t think about the cracking sound or the smells or the guts and you just focus on doing your best to save a life.
Anyway, I was going to skip that part, but I guess I just wanted to say that God gives us the strength and ability, but we have to make the choice to walk through situations that might not be easy, but allow God to challenge us and grow us and teach us that we do control our minds and thoughts. It’s definitely a lesson I’m still learning. Not necessarily in this area, but in other areas – when I say I “can’t” do something, I’ve found that it’s usually more that I “choose” not to do it, and most of the time changing what I am willing/able to do is just a matter of getting my mind to think the right thoughts.
Alright, so we got Sid’s “coat” and strapped it on him. Julia helped hold him still. Honestly, it was like a night/day shift – as soon as he got that coat on, that mama cow started trying to lick him.
Still, he had been pretty roughed up by the two cows who didn’t want him, and he didn’t want to go anywhere near that mama. So we had to get her in the head chute. Pie tailed her while I worked on squirting milk into Sid’s mouth, then getting him close enough to latch on to his new mama so he could figure out how to get his own lunch.
Julia and Watson left to go to PA.
It took a little while and the sun was setting when we finally put them in a pen together. The mama was making all the loving mommy moo sounds mama cows make at their babies and Sid didn’t seem too scared of her.
Yesterday morning it was cold enough to see your breath and the sun was just coming up over the foothills of the Blue Ridge when Pie and I walked over to see what we would find. Either she took him or she didn’t, right?
We first glimpsed the little bull calf that no one wanted through the cracks in the fence. He had lost his “coat” which scared me for a moment, but his mama was making those beautiful mommy moo sounds and Sid’s tail was wagging back and forth as he ate his breakfast. We watched from way back for a bit, then stepped closer. She shook her head and acted like she wanted to eat us, and that’s really all we needed to know. Sid finally has a mom who loves him. : )
Thanks so much for spending time with me this week!
Hugs and love,
~Jessie 