I guess this is the season for calves, because the wife has been talking about all the new babies out in the pasture lately. But, it seems like one of them had some issues… not so much the calf itself, but the mama. Here’s a mental image you won’t see often, in two words: prolapsed uterus.
However it was, the mama didn’t make it. That meant catching the calf, which is usually just a matter of letting it hang out for a day or two until it’s too weak to run away, then bring it to an enclosure where we can feed it. Lief, who was The Boy’s dog, got displaced from his pen and moved back to a tree and doghouse so the calf could have a place to live. The first day or so was… interesting. We had to pin him against a corner, then get him to figure out that the bottle had foooooood. After exactly one of those ordeals, he got the idea and was glad to see us coming.
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| Slurp… uh, eet mor chikin… Slurp |
Mason helped me out one evening. “What should we call him?” he asked.
“Steak,” I grinned. “He’s gonna go on my grill.”
“No he won’t!”
Super-cute eyelashes notwithstanding… but whatever. I’m calling him Buncha, as in Buncha Bull. Most likely, once he’s weaned, we’ll return him to the pasture. But before that happens, we’ll most likely be feeding him out of a bucket. Buncha is already trying to find an opening out of the pen, so I hope it won’t be much longer before he returns to the herd. But I guess if someone waves a bottle at him, he’ll be glad to go wherever it leads.
"Steak" is such a good name for any pet.
ReplyDeleteJohn, I was joking about taking him for walks at the park. He can't pull the leash any harder than an Aussie Shep (at least right now… give him a year, though).
ReplyDeletePatricia, "Pork Chop" would work too! Wife had a young bull in an enclosure near the pasture a couple years ago, and she called him Hamburger.