First Baby Calf

My mom’s boyfriend has cows. He always lets us go out and see them, and we’ve helped him feed them before. Just a week ago he sold almost all of his calves from last year, with still about nineteen of them left. One cow is very special to him. Its number is 701. This cow will come right up to him and let him pet it, lift its legs up, and anything else. A few weeks ago, he had an idea. He put my youngest sister on top of the cow! The cow didn’t move an inch. So, he put my other sister on top of it. Again, it didn’t move. My sisters only weigh about 100 pounds together, so he said, “I wonder,” and put me on top of the cow. This time it stepped forward, but only because my mom was holding corn out to it. I screamed and almost fell off, though so my mom’s boyfriend got me down, and he was laughing.

Just a week ago a cow had its first calf, the first calf of the year. It already eats like its mother-eating hay. It still suckles but very little. It only suckles when it is thirsty, but now it’s starting to drink water.

One day when it was eating, I had an idea. I decided to act like a calf, see what it would do, how it would react. At first it got scared and ran to a corner of the pen. I got down on my hands and knees and looked through the gate. (This was all inside the calving barn) The calf understood I wasn’t scary and came up to the gate. Then it stuck its head through so I got closer to the gate so that me and the calf were touching noses. Then the calf licked me! Then the process happened again- it would get scared, it got braver, came up touched noses with me, and licked me again! It came up and licked me about eight times in all and my mom’s boyfriend was surprised. He had never seen a calf act like that!