Adoption!

A lesson in calf adoption.  If you're eating or if you are totally grossed out by ickiness, you may want to skip this reading!

If you remember, several weeks ago we had an orphaned calf, Baby Honda.  Honda was half of a set of twins.  The cow decided she only wanted one of the twins and so that left the smaller of the two orphaned.  We brought her home, warmed her up and got her trained to eat from a bottle.  She was haltered and tied to a long lead rope that allowed her to have a pretty big area to run in.  Bottle calves tend to turn into pets and that's exactly what happened with Honda.  She was thoroughly petted after each feeding and would run along side Josh and Caleb just like a dog would.

Notice all that was past tense.

Towards the end of last week, we had another cow give birth to a set of twins.  The twins, however, were so small that they either didn't survive once they were born or were born stillborn (already dead).  That left us with a cow who was ready to care for her calf...but she had no calf.  And just so happens...we had a calf who needed a Mama.  Enter Baby Honda and the beginning of the adoption process.

For those of you who don't know, a cow recognizes her young by the sound of its bawl (or "cry") and by its smell.  She (the cow) learns what her calf smells like when she cleans it off as soon as its born.  And from then on, the only calf she claims as hers is the calf she smelled right after giving birth.

That presents a problem... Honda does not smell like the cow's calves.  What's a farmer to do?  To make the adoption successful, Honda HAS to smell like what she gave birth to.  (Here comes the icky part.)  Loren and Josh masked Honda's scent by cutting the hide off of one of the dead calves and "tying" it onto the body of Honda.  Then when the cow is sniffing around, what she is really smelling and recognizing is the hide of the calf that she gave birth to and cleaned.  So she thinks its her calf.  The cow and calf are then locked up together in a pen until the cow fully claims the new calf as her own and allows it to nurse without any resistance.

Today is the third day the pair has been together and so far so good.  The dead calf's hide has fallen off of Honda but the new Mama is still tending to her. So it looks like she's taken her as her own.  So Honda has a new Mama and I'm not gonna have any more cow poop in my yard.  Its a win-win!

Hoped you learned a little more about what can happen during calving season!