And One Becomes Three

Our orphan 'Nemo' has two friends with him now.

Nemo is the largest one closest to us, his mum, Lisa, went down after calving him, never got up and despite homeopathic treatment and conventional treatment by the vet she died just five days after having him.

The middle calf is one of twin calves. Her mum had twins last year, but didn't seem to do the two of them as well as she should have, so we have taken one of them off her this year and hopefully this one will do much better having calf milk and calf pellets than she would if we had left her on her mum with her butty. This calf will not go for breeding but will be raised for meat. Twin calves do not breed, there is something that alters in their genetic make up, which will be sad as we will get to know her very well as we are feeding her three times a day and the children get in and play with her etc.

'Oscar' is the calf lying the furthest away against the corner of the wall, his mum was quite old and several weeks after having him she got down and was finding it really difficult to get up, and was staying down for longer and longer. the vet decided she was very arthritic and rheumatic and so we had to have her put down, otherwise when she went out into the fields she may well have got stuck somewhere and died in a tragic way because she was too old to cope with normal cow life.

They will now feed from an automatic feeder which is like a long bucket with three boobs on it, this is where the calves can all suck at the same time. previously we were feeding them out of a bottle with a teat on. Well you could feed two at a time, but the third one kept trying to suck at anything ti could, ears, clothes, feet etc and then when you fed the third one the other two would be sucking away at you.........

It won't be long until they can go outside for the first time into the fresh air. I bet they'll run and jump around together.