Monday, March 14, 2011

The Orphan has a Mama!

Also, I just wanted to share the good news, that the orphan calf has been adopted.  Yesterday, a mama lost her baby. So that meant that we could graft this calf.  Some of you may have read my POST on it last year. In case you didn't, grafting is when they skin the hide of the dead calf, and tie it onto the orphan calf. This way, it smells like the mama's calf. When the cow smells this calf, she accepts it as her own.  So she lets it nurse. Then, once it's nursed for a while, it develops the right scent and we (we, figuratively speaking), can take the hide off. Pretty interesting, eh?
So I'm very happy this baby has a Mom now.  The tricky part is getting him to figure out how to eat. He's had a bottle shoved in his mouth so he's a bit confused. But it should work out and he should learn how to nurse.

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