bottle calf | Song Dog Journal

Originally published in the Custer County Chronicle on January 29, 2025

Calving season on the ranch is a period of stark contrasts, a time of seeing some of the best of the best of God’s Creation alongside some of the saddest of the saddest. On the one hand, we revel in seeing mother cows birth and nourish and protect their young with such incredible maternal instincts, showcasing the best of God’s design for them; we search the pastures for newborn calves tucked away safely like little Easter eggs in long grass and sheltered places, waiting while their mamas graze or go to water; we see the fascinating natural formation of nursery groups by the busy mamas, so all calves are watched and all mother cows are fed and watered. But there is also the too-frequent reminder that we live in a broken world, the effects of which trickle down to the creatures we steward as well. Calves are stillborn or die afterwards, weather events challenge the best of our efforts, calving complications end tragically, and Nature takes its toll indiscriminately and sometimes it feels randomly.

Sometimes the bitterness and sweetness come by turns, first one and then the other. Sometimes they are mixed, inseparable. Sometimes they mix in the strangest sort of tragicomedy called a bottle calf that sticks around for weeks and months.

Granted, calving season for us isn’t supposed to start until the end of February, although neighbors of ours are already in the thick of it, or even are wrapping up. But we had a few, shall we say, incidents last year perpetrated by a yearling bull that was supposed to be a steer and wasn’t, and some dozen or so yearling heifers that he apparently found very attractive and which were not intended to be breeding animals. One calf showed up right before Christmas, and a few more showed up over the next month, one of which was orphaned more or less immediately. Of course, I had just dried up the milk cow.

Bottle calves are supposed to be a nuisance. They’re supposed to be a hassle and, given the cost of a bag of powdered milk replacer, they are a financial nuisance, if nothing else. But clearly I’m not as wise and mature as other members of my family, because I’m afraid I don’t consider the three-times-daily feedings a nuisance, and really don’t object to calf bottles and pitchers for mixing the milk taking over the bathroom, or even the faint but persistent odor of soured milk. I don’t even mind trotting down in the dark to give Beckybell (my endearing husband named the calf after his mother-in-law – isn’t he charming?) her suppertime bottle. I’m afraid I don’t mind having my toes trampled by tiny hooves or my knees butted by the bony little head, or even the milky mess she somehow leaves all over my clothes. In fact, I thoroughly enjoy being mama cow. A few days ago, Beckybell managed to escape the nursery pen and was waiting for me and her evening bottle at the house when we got back from our walk. During the cold snap last week, her little ears froze, so she’s been wearing various ridiculous iterations of ear muffs to keep them from re-freezing, and I think we saved the ears.

But as much as I enjoy this critter and having close interactions with an animal that usually is only handled from a distance, it leaves a little sore pang in my heart. She is lacking her mama. God designed her to need her mama.

As much bad press as ranchers get from climate activists, as much as the FDA and the CDC and whatever other three- and four-letter organizations there are that vilify cows as being a blight upon the earth and an alleged contributor to global warming (or is it global cooling, I can’t remember?), or as much as PETA has gone after ranchers for “cruel treatment” of livestock, there is so incredibly much that people in those organizations do not see. Good things. Wholesome things. The best things. As agriculture as an industry has increased in size, and as the number of people engaged in it has dwindled, people have lost their understanding, yet continue to pass judgements.

They don’t see the ranchers intently watching the weather ahead of a winter snow event, heading out on ATVs with sleet biting their faces to move 100 cows into a more sheltered pasture. They don’t see the heroic and futile efforts in sub-zero weather to save a calving cow. They don’t see the careful tending during a cold snap, keeping water open and food on the ground. They don’t see the desperate attempt to warm a nearly-frozen calf downed during a snowstorm. They don’t see the careful tending of a newborn calf and the new mother. They don’t feel the defeat when a young calf dies and the cow won’t leave its side. They don’t see the bleary-eyed rancher getting up every two hours to check heifers, and they don’t hear the pre-dawn phone call up to the house to ask his little wife to bundle up and come down to the calving shed to help turn a backward calf, since she has smaller hands. They don’t see the tears shed over a failed save or the teary-eyed laughter at a success. They don’t see the miracle of a calf taking its first steps with a sleep-deprived ranching couple looking on smiling, or chuckling as an overzealous mama cow knocks it over with her aggressive licking. They don’t see the ranch wife on the umpteenth feeding of a little white-faced bottle baby, tucking the calf in for the night, sorry in her heart that there isn’t a mama cow for the little orphan.

Because we care for the livestock that God has give us to steward. We hate seeing them suffer, we love seeing them thrive, and we do everything in our power to give them the best life we can give them. At no time is that more apparent than in that sweet moment when a newborn calf hits the ground, floppy eared and wet and sneezing up fluid, and mama cow turns and sees the little intruder. As she goes to work cleaning it off, instinct overriding her surprise, we watch in quiet awe, full of pleasant warmth on the coldest of days.

So I really don’t know what March Madness is, other than it has something to do with sports, I think. But March is a crazy month. The winter sleepiness is shaken off and everything wakes up. All at the same time. The garden, the cows, the weather, the schedule, the chickens, everything.

There are babies everywhere, and I mean everywhere.

A little cold snap over this last weekend accentuated that, with little baby calves and their irritable mamas stuffed in every corner of the yard, with all available indoor space occupied by doubles and triples, and cows with slightly older calves getting shuffled into sheltered corners of the yard to keep them out of the wind and driving snow.

So far there have been two sets of twins, and both extra babies were shuffled successfully onto two cows who had lost calves–Good saves, on both counts, and the two lost calves were just part of the percentage of unavoidable losses, rather than the rather staggering losses of last spring, due to a collision of weather and luck of the draw. Posey got to try being a nurse cow for a week with one of the extra twins, until a mother needing a calf turned up. Posey was not impressed. Some nurse cow. We’ll see how she does when she calves, I guess.

Seedlings are going nuts in the brightest window in the house, around 120 tomato seedlings, some herbs and greens, and of course my elderberry cuttings. Bread baking and some jelly making and some sewing projects and some continuing ed for my paramedic license and a dive into spring cleaning have kept the days full. They seem to end as quickly as they start. And yes, that is a seed starting mat under that bowl of dough! Another use for those handy things, especially when you keep the temps low in the house!

And then yesterday happened. Or rather, Yellow Cat happened yesterday. We knew she was ready to have kittens at any time, and I complacently assumed, this being her second litter, that she would be competent. Boy, was I wrong. I went down to do chores yesterday morning and found a pile of three kittens that appeared dead, in just about the worst place Yellow Cat could have had them. She was unconcerned. I honestly thought they were dead and rigored, and when I picked up the two that looked the most dead, they were unresponsive and stiff and cold to the touch. She didn’t appear to have really cleaned them, their fur was matted down, and I really mean it when I say they appeared dead, and I have seen plenty of dead animals to know what I’m talking about. This isn’t an “I’ve never had chicks before and one is stretched out luxuriously under the heat lamp and I think it is dead” situation. They looked dead. Very dead. One of the kittens, though, moved a little and made the tiniest sound. It looked pretty hopeless, but I can’t stand to walk away from something like that. I almost left the two most dead looking, but gathered all three up, stuffed them inside my vest and ran up to the house with them. In the back of my mind was the paramedic mantra, “They aren’t dead until they are warm and dead,” and after a mere few minutes under a heat lamp and on top of a (you guessed it) seed starting mat, they came alive.

Baby animals are incredibly resilient but also incredibly fragile, a strange dichotomy, and even as they warmed up I felt that it was probably futile, but I gave them a little milk replacer laced with corn syrup, enough to wet their dried mouths, and two of them did try sucking it off the cloth I was using. I finally rounded up Yellow Cat from down by the barn, who was sauntering around like she hadn’t a care in the world, and locked her up with them. Long story short, the three kittens all nursed, she had two more, and all five survived the night with their mother in the bathtub and are doing just fine. I am still pretty mad at that cat, though.

It is hard to believe that April is just around the corner. April, the first month of long days in the saddle pairing out the calving pasture, the first real month of springtime although snow is always a possibility. There is always something going on!