As you know, we had a set of twins the other day. Yesterday we began the process of grafting the smaller twin calf to a mama cow who had lost her calf. This particular cow is, to say the least, a little wild. I want to tell you that my family and I pride ourselves on having a ridiculously tame herd. You can literally feed at least half of our herd by hand. We achieve this by feeding out our heifer calves that we keep back for cows. From the time the heifer calves come home from pasture in the fall, until they go out to pasture in the summer, they are fed in a pen. Everyday someone goes out and feeds them some grain or cake. Eventually, they start to greet you at the gate to get their grain. They heifer calves grow into full-grown cows who will still come up to you and expect food. This year, we bought some first-year heifers to build our herd a little quicker. Some of these soon-to-be mother cows are very tame, but others, like the one I referred to before, are not. So, the wild cow was about to get a new baby. The first thing we did to graft the calf was put the cow in a head catch in the barn. We milked her and fed the little guy a few times yesterday and again once this morning, just to be sure he was getting enough to drink. Once the cow's milk made its way through the calf, he started smelling like his new mama. At this point, she started allowing him to drink on his own a little bit. Unfortunately, she's still a little wild. Every time we tried to check on her in the barn she would disregard the calf and start running around in a circle in her maternity pen. The only way we know he is getting anything to drink is pretty much because he's still alive. He would have starved to death by now if he wasn't getting milk. I'm glad to say we can call the grafting a success.
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| The little guy. |
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| The new mama. Terrible picture, I know. I'll take another I promise. |
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