Remember when I randomly photo-spammed this blog a while back? Yeah, well, I'm planning on doing that again. Right now. But first some info:
Two calves were just born on the school farm. The first was born around 9:30 PM on Tuesday of last week, but I didn't get to see her until the next morning which was, fortunately, Mountain Day--meaning that we got to sleep late and had no classes in the afternoon. I didn't sleep in, but rather took my camera down to the farm to see Sarah (the first calf). She was so cute. When I got there she hadn't been observed nursing so the farm manager was watching her (later she did nurse). Then in the afternoon, around 4:30, I got another call saying that the second calf had been born ten minutes ago and to come quickly. So I got to see the second calf (a bull named Jordan) shortly after his birth and brought my camera along. These are the best pictures from that event.
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| Jordan had trouble finding his mother's teat at first, so he resorted to suckling on Phoebe's hand. |
A few days afterwards, I was on calf patrol. The calves had been weaned very early as their mothers are dairy cows and early weaning/bottle feeding apparently helps them be more friendly to people. Calf patrol for me meant that I was watching the calves in their little paddock and making sure that if they got caught in the electric fence that I would pull the plug. Little Jordan had quite an adventure that day, just after I started. He hit the fence and backed off, which was fine, but then freaked out and ran into the fence in a different spot and got tangled up. I pulled the plug, but then he got out of it so I plugged it in again. And then he got tangled up again. I pulled the plug out one more time, and in his terror he ran through the fence and into the weeds at the back of the sugar house, where he promptly collapsed of exhaustion. I was sitting there for ten minutes, knocking on the sugar house window while trying to make sure he didn't get up and run again (that didn't happen) until someone came out. Then another student and I had to heft a very unwieldy bull calf who did not want to stand up, let alone be moved, back to his paddock. We put him back in and he sat there exhausted for quite a while, during which time I sat in the paddock and made sure he didn't get tangled up again (he didn't). Eventually I got out my camera. The light didn't want to hit him right, though, so I went to get some pictures of Sarah instead. Only one turned out, sadly.
But of course the calves weren't going anywhere for the next few days. So here are a few more pictures of them together the other day.
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| Sarah |
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| Jordan (left) and Sarah (right) |
More to come!
