This OLD mama, (I call her Annie.) gave birth to this little calf a few WEEKS ago.
She is OLD. Has been there for like.. ever. (Ranch owner, Clark, is very attached to her.) You can see her ribs are actually starting to... *shudder*... Poke through her skin? Dx
Anyway, Clark asked my parents to help him go out to the pasture to get one of the cows, who had fallen or something and wasn't getting up.
She'd been laying wrong I guess, all her weight in the wrong place. She couldn't get up. So my parents and Clark make a "sling" for her, and with the help of a tractor, get her back to the ring. Then Clark said she had a young calf. Oh no!
This cow was pretty much dead. She looked dead. She is old, she would not get up. And to have a nursing calf! We were all really afraid that the cow was going to die.
So Clark gets the calf, (I call him Little One.) and brings him into the ring with her. Mama is still not up.
I guess over the next few days, she was trying so hard to get back up on her feet. She needed some water, so she tried again. Clark pulled on her horns, and Annie was up!
But, she still had a nursing calf to tend to, and so Clark separated them (He's not old enough to be weened, I know that.) and put him into a stall next to her. She wasn't going to have enough strength to care for him, and keep her energy.
We were thinking Little One would have to be bottle fed.
But anyway!
They're fine now. :3
I'm SO happy.
The only thing is, people don't seem to understand that this calf is YOUNG and probably pretty freaked about having so much commotion over him! People walk into his stall and expect him to walk over to them to be scratched! Before this incident, this baby probably didn't know that humans even existed. (The pasture is pretty wild.. only being brought in from grazing to be weened, fed, sold, or gelded.)
People CHASE the poor thing around the stall like he's a toy!
I myself have gone into the stall with an apple core, but I didn't chase him! I simply crouched down real low and talked quietly to him. (He did eventually come over to sniff me and let me scratch his forehead. Then he bolted. xD)
Its so hard to hold my tongue when I see these people do this! (Its actually only one person. . . . . .) Do they have no common sense?!
