A Mama's Love

Working a ranch has it's interesting moments. Spring calving we have found, can be discouraging and tiring from the long hours outside looking for new calves in cold rain or blowing snow.

This year it has been the extreme opposite. Calving season started in early February, with mostly sunny skies and clear cold nights. The cows and calves thrived!

We have a cow, #120, that started losing weight in the fall. By mid December we didn't think she was going to live through the winter. Every time we went out to feed I would look for her, every time, I thought she looked worse. We figured out there was something wrong with her mouth, she could eat hay just fine but when she chewed a cud the saliva would run out of her mouth like water. It had us baffled.

The beginning of January, Rob declared she looked better, she was gaining weight. To me she still looked bad. We continued to watch her, she did start to look and act a little better but far from normal! On March 6th, Rob came in from checking cows and said, "You will never believe who had a calf." We only had about 60 cows to calve yet so... you better tell me!!  "#120" Are you serious!! Is she still alive? Is the calf alive?

Our next big concern, Would she have enough milk to feed the calf? Rob thought we should take colostrum to the calf so armed with warm milk and towels, we headed out to check up on the calf. The mama cow stood right by her calf making those little mooing sounds that tell the calf to "run their coming to get you!" or else it means, "if they try to take you, I will chase them down". Both have happened before!! But this time the calf stood there and watched us approach. #120 didn't even try to lick off her baby, so we knew there was something not right with her mouth. I fed the calf the colostrum while Rob rubbed it down with the towels.

His next question was "should we just take the calf to the barn and keep her there?"  My mother heart couldn't handle that! No, the calf needs her mother, and 120 needs her calf! We can bring milk out every day to supplement and see what happens.  Several weeks later,  Nate and Ryan wanted to check the cow out and see what really was wrong with her. They took their horses out and roped her, got her down on the ground and looked in her mouth. They came to the conclusion she must have some kind of throat cancer. Now what do we do? 

Nothing! She seems to have good days and bad days but she still hovers over her calf. The calf seems to give her the will to keep plodding along. Since the cow doesn't have the milk supply the calf needs, we still take milk out morning and evening.  For awhile the calf would let us stand next to her while she drank her bottle. Now we need to sit in the side by side and she comes to us. If we get out, she runs back to her mother. The side by side is her substitute mom!! 

I'm dreading the day we have to sell this little gal! She has the best of both worlds. She gets most of her nourishment from a bottle, but she also has a mama's love!!