Having successfully raised some pigs, we felt very confident to raise some cows. After all, when you ride around in the country you see folks sitting on the front porch resting and waving to you while the cattle peacefully graze in the pasture. How hard could it be to just put them inside a fenced in grass area and let them eat the grass and grow up to be steaks. We found out later that those folks on the front porch were probably resting after trying to catch the cows and get them back in the pasture.
I cut down most of the trees and made about a four acre pasture complete with a spring for water and hired the same man who graded our driveway to push off the stumps so I could plant grass. I had enough wood cut and split for many winters heat and we had a wood stove in the basement that would heat the whole house. We had a power outage once for over three days and we were toasty warm and life went on normally except for the over foot of snow and ice we had. We used the Riteway stove for much of our winter heat.
I planted fescue and, by the spring, we had a nice pasture started. All that was needed was to fence it in. We called a lady about buying two "Bottle Calves" and she said that she would deliver them. When she came she had three calves and said that we could buy all of them if we wanted. They were cute little critters and were very friendly. We thought that we could handle three as well as two so we bought all of them. Why not, that would just be more hamburger we would have later, right?
I had built a temporary fence and a shed in the back yard to hold the calves while I finished the pasture fence for their permanent home. We had to feed them bottled formula and a little feed every day like babies and wanted them close to the house until they were weened. We had a quick summer shower right after we got them and we ran in the house and got some towels to dry them off with because we couldn't have the little darlings get wet. Okay, we were dumb but we were dumb about a lot of things and still managed to get through it.
Mr. Davis, our neighbor down the road was my adviser on raising the calves. He had some cows and a huge Angus bull who would run across the pasture and skid to a stop when he got close to the one strand of electric fence that was only about two feet high. The power was off but the bull didn't know that. All he remembered was touching the electric wire with his nose when he was just a little calf and getting a good jolt. I wanted to use an electric fence but Nancy didn't want to shock the little cuties. She later changed her mind about the electric fence idea but more about that later.
We found that they seemed friendly because they would nose you all over because they wanted to get some milk from somewhere, anywhere. Feeding them was a real pain. I mean literally a pain because they would step on your feet with those sharp little hooves while you held the big bottles for them. We soon learned to stand outside the fence while feeding them and wear the heaviest shoes or boots we had. They would suck on the bottles so hard that they would create a vacuum in the bottle that would reverse the nipple into the bottle. You would have to unscrew the bottle and remove and reverse the nipple. They would also butt you while feeding them. Mr Davis said that was natural for them because they would butt their mom for more milk.
I came home from work one day and Billy said "Daddy, we have named the calves". Bandit, Molasses, and Sugarfoot were their names. I just knew that we would probably never eat any of that beef but after a year or so later they were not so sweet and not very lovable. They were sent to the butcher one at a time but more about that later.
I finished the pasture fence and the day came when we would move them to the new pasture. We tied a rope to them and led them to their new home with no problem. They were all fed hay, over an acre of grass each, and grain feed every day. I never tried to figure out how much the beef cost was after they were sent to their eternal reward over a year later.
A fool and his money are soon elected.
Will Rogers
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