New Calf

This is rather old news by now. It is another of those posts that disappeared. On the morning of March 21, when I went out to milk Mrs. Moo, I discovered a calf frisking around Chessie! I had gone out to check on her late the afternoon before, and thought she probably had another day to go—shows how much I know! As far as we can figure, she had the calf that evening yet; the boys saw her laying down in a funny way while they were choring but didn’t think anything of it. The calf was dried off and running already. In fact, a couple of hours after we found him, he spooked and ran away! He went across the road, through the neighbor’s fence, and across a very large paddock to the far corner! One of my boys chased him down and caught him, and then they brought the ride-on mower with a hand cart tied on behind to fetch him home. We trussed him up and tied him on so that he couldn’t move, and then tied him up when he got back to his mother. He’s still a fiesty little thing, a month later. We’re bottle-feeding him, but he doesn’t trust us an inch. He’ll come for his bottle, but very warily, as if we’re going to eat him! (Don’t tell him that’s his ultimate fate—it’s a couple of years down the road yet, but that is his destiny.) He is a Jersey/Angus cross, by the way.

For this first month, we kept him in this small chicken yard out the kitchen window. I tried a few times to get someone to get a video of him playing, but I don’t think we got it. It was awfully fun to watch, though! Once or twice a day, he would start racing around and around, sometimes butting the walls of the building or fighting an empty bucket. Usually he did it at dusk. Such a circus! He loved it when the chickens would be let out for a little while—company!