There Be Calves Here

The dairy farmer finally called. He had four male calves we could buy, between the ages of one day old to seven days old. These guys are babies. The farmer suggested we keep them in individual pens for while. This wasn't what I had in mind. I pictured the little guys romping through the pasture, chasing each other in the sunshine, not locked in individual pens in the barn.

The farmer explained that the sucking instinct in calves is strong, VERY strong, and since they only get fed a bottle 2-3 times a day, they will look for something else to suck, and this, unfortunately, ends up to be each other.

They suck each other? I didn't get it. Their ears? Their tails? Their.... oh...got it.

We spent yesterday afternoon building individual pens.


Then we put lime on the ground, then pitched straw for bedding.




We put the panels on the pickup truck and Melissa drove 10 miles to pick them up. Each little guy was carried into his own personal pen.




We've been feeding bottle lambs for years; the process is the same for calves, it's just the scale that's different. A newborn lamb might eat most of a bottle in one day; A newborn calf is going to eat three of the gigantic bottles (with gigantic nipples) on the left.





Not only do the large bottles, which hold half a gallon, take both hands, but you need both hands to hang on. There is some serious draw on that bottle.

Meet the boys:

"Hi, I'm Number1. I know I look innocent, but believe you me, I wasn't born yesterday.... Oh, wait, yes I was. I was born yesterday!"


"I'm Number 2. I'm a few days old, and like to hop a great deal. They tell me we'll be out of these pens in a few days for some serious hopping."


"I'm Number 3. I like long walks, listening to music, and sucking. I really like sucking."


"I'm Number 4, and unlike those other three, who look like deer because they're Jerseys, I'm a Jersey/Holstein cross. I'm 7 days old, and butt against the bottle for all I'm worth. Sometimes the women holding the bottle curse and moan about how much it hurts to have the bottle butted into their stomachs. Tough cookies."



And finally, back at the house is a 5-month old puppy, who thinks she's old news now because of the calves.


She's not.

But What About Us?

We are in our spring waiting season...waiting for the weather to warm up, for the grass to start growing again, and for the lambs to be born in three weeks. (Yikes.)

So while I'm waiting, I tend to get excited about things. A few days ago on NPR an economist from Stanford was interviewed on the impact meat production has on the environment. Not surprisingly, it's not good. She listed all the bad things---fuel consumption, chemical use, high transportation costs, etc. The negative impacts of industrial agriculture form quite an impressive list. (And that's not even getting into animal welfare, which an economist isn't likely to address because you can't measure it and assign it a cost.)

All through the interview I kept waiting for the economist to point out that small, sustainable farming doesn't harm the environment nearly as much as industrial agriculture. I waited and I waited. Finally, at the end of the interview she said a few sentences about buying locally.

That was it. Nothing about supporting small farms. Nothing about raising animals on pasture, letting them spread their own manure, letting them harvest the sun's crop (grass) without using a tractor or any fossil fuel.

So there I was, jumping up and down in front of the radio, crying, "What about us? Are we so invisible that economists think it's a waste of time to point people in our direction?"

I hope not. We're out here, but many of us are going under because we don't have the resources to promote our product, or the time, or the skills. We love animals, so we raise them. We'd love to raise more and sell them to people to eat.

So we're here, waiting. We're doing what we can to let people know we're here, but we'd love it if consumers started bypassing the meat counter in the grocery store, bought themselves a small freezer, and came directly to us. Good for the environment. Good for the animals. Good for the farmer. Good for you.