Cow Lost Calf, But Will She Adopt a New One?

Little crochet time, guys. Yeah, I would try it. Day 2 on this adoption process. Aunt Flossie, potential mother, is giving that calf the cold shoulder. She's hungry this morning. We're gonna go examine that, fix that, see what's going on. Come on, Flossie. Come on, she's calling for you, honey. Are you gonna let her milk today? Today the day, day 2. Got all this fresh grass, he's eating the hay. Phyllis has given 2 strong gallons this morning. It's been a while since she's given that much. We'll take it. From the looks of it, Flossie is bagged up, so she's going to give a lot too. My plan is to let the calf get as much as she wants. If I have to put her in the stanchion, I have to put her in the stanchion, but I'm gonna let the calf get as much, much as it wants. Came to get more alfalfa from our new alfalfa batch, and it's quarter filled with grain. Look at this— peas, uh, wheat. And, uh, I don't know how deep it is. I keep digging and I keep finding wheat. I mean, it's one thing if a little bit's on top. It looks deep. Oh, you know what we could do here? Let's, let's empty it out into this next, uh, bag. Good news and bad news. Good news is we did reach 100% alfalfa. A little bit of residue there. The bad news is I probably pulled out— this was 2,000 pounds. I probably pulled out almost 1,000. Interesting. I came upon them. Calf was laying down. Mama's laying down. Calf hasn't bailed it in a long time. Did you guys get it done? I don't think so. Look, she's gonna try. See, she just kicks at her. When she tries. They say it takes 3 days. It's day 2. I'm getting nervous. You gonna do it? My idea: one scoop for Flossie in the— in here, get her distracted and happy, and then maybe she'll let this calf nurse.

She knows she'll get kicked.

Here, let me try it. Wow. All right, let's try the stanchion. I don't know, the one at the house, a bit of a tighter squeeze. I don't know if we'll be able to do it in here, but we'll try. All right, get the, uh, get her some more. Okay, give her some more. Okay, she's left the nurse. She let her on in the stanchion from the right side. Oh, she's not— keep fighting, honey, keep fighting, keep fighting. Okay, I'm gonna get back there and hold the bag.

Look, she got on!

She got on despite—

yeah, I mean, well, she's gonna—

yes, yes! If she can fight, if she can fight through that, heck yes! No help. I said they'll get hungry enough and they'll just Do it!

Oh, look at it!

She pushed! I'm proud of her. Good girl. I'm proud of her. She pushed through that. I didn't have to help.

She wants to, um, name it Maple.

Oh yeah, name the calf Maple. Why Maple?

I don't know.

After our bus?

I don't know, but it's so cute, the wagging its little tail.

I was gonna say we better not name it to make sure it lives, but if she was gonna kill him Killed her. Sure, she would have done it by now. That's just a change. There was also a change yesterday when we came out here. Yes, I went to, you know, just check on them, maybe see if she would let me. Flossie was very protective of that calf. She wasn't from the get-go. No, but like, Flossie would come at me just like she used to when she would have a first calf. Yeah, I mean, she would never like— she never came and like butted me or anything. No, but she would come. She was checking it out, kind of be like, wait a minute. She's hot. She's tall, Raymond. Oh look, she's going to the front. Oh look. Oh, keep persisting, keep persisting, honey. Here, here, let's get her some more. Here, fresh on top. Keep persisting. So persistent. That's what's important. I think she's— I'm not going in there because I want this calf to keep doing exactly what she's doing, keep persisting, because I can't be out here 24/7 and they've got to learn. Plus, I hope, hope that calf will keep persisting. Flossie will realize this isn't ending. There she goes, front. Becky, what?

This makes me so happy. Yes, good girl, Flossie!

Yes, everybody, good job. What'd you say?

I think this guy was gonna drink all the milk. Josh said we got to get this calf good and hungry, and I think last night she got good enough.

Yeah. How much milk do you think I'll get after this calf? None.

You're not gonna get nothing.

That's a good problem to have right now.

Problem to have. That's exactly—

I did get me 3/4 of a gallon of colostrum, so I'm pretty happy. Yeah, I can share.

Well, and this will be good for her milk production too.

Yeah, she is milking all 4 teats, making all this struggle worth it, making this little tiny paddock, the extra work that that is. We got our next one set up for today, the stress and the trouble. We want a calf share because I don't know, it takes some pressure off us, demands more milk, gives us more milk. If I were to get injured or something and just you couldn't do it a day, it's just all around better. I mean, if you don't milk it out all the way, the calf nurses it all best for us, and you don't get mastitis.

We don't see a huge difference in the cream line, um, so it's, it's something that works And we have a cow now.

Yeah, that we can either, uh, sell or keep for ourselves. Yeah. Hey, what are you gonna do if we come out here this afternoon or tomorrow and that calf's nursing and she's not in the stanchion? What's that gonna feel like? I feel like the impossible became possible. Yeah, it's a lot of work. Than like this. In some ways it would have just been easier to let her not have a calf. Yeah, do you like Josh, just milk them once a day and I feel like this tea in the front, get all the milk.

This, this front left teat has more milk in it. I wish the calf would come over and just raining those.

And Flossie definitely doesn't have the emotion that you think she might have. Yeah, because she did not adopt this calf right away. She has not adopted this cat?

Not, uh, emotionally, I would say she hasn't.

Certainly not. There it is, Beck. We're on the front left. Interviewed there because I want to eat breakfast at some point. Well, it's 10:45.

I think the problem here was this Oh yeah, no, I didn't want the—

I didn't want the calf to be messing around on unnatural ground there.

But no, and we had to push her over to get that calf to— Come on, Flossy, let it down.

I think she took it off. Hey, that's one thing about growing your own food. It's a lot of work and you're using really high energy. So this extra special. She's licking it. Is she licking the calf, Jonah? I think so.

Yeah, she's licking it.

I think she might be licking the calf. Or is that calf to her left at her back feet?

No, it's the calf.

Nope, she's not licking it. Oh, there it is. Oh man. Okay, here we are. We've had a little bit of distraction. It's been almost a week. I think we have to send this camera back either tomorrow or Tuesday, so we got to knock out this master class. Here, show them our ideas. We're gonna— we're gonna get some lights coming out to these stalls. We got some construction lights, they're gonna be put in there. Coming out. We've got some drop cords to get power, uh, so we don't have to run power right through here. We'll go over, we'll go over the stalls in there. Okay, Joan, you want to set it up? Let's set up this You Can Farm master class for all those Polyface Design customers. Polyface Designs, by the way, it's not too late if you want in on that and you want this master class. All you got to do is get Polyface Designs from us and we'll get you this master class series when it's ready, hopefully by the end of next— well, this depends on how— on if we can get it shot today. Let's see, guys. I can't believe it. Callie and Choir, look how good that looks back there. Um, yeah, we did it. I just did 3 of the lessons. A lot of our stories, a lot from Joel's book You Can Farm. It applies to whether you're homesteading or farming. It's just going to help you overcome some of those mental barriers getting in your way, uh, help you become more content, realize what you have, and really to just grow where you're planted and do with what you have and just get started. Let's check our ham. We got a smoked ham coming on tonight. Been cooking that since like 7 this morning. Look at the smell from the land. Got some frozen collards, some Popo sweet potatoes, and pork. Ham. How is it, Bec?

It's good.

How do you, uh, you know, this is coming from a lady that never would even eat ham.

Yeah, I wasn't— well, okay, it's coming from a lady who does not like like honey baked hams.

Oh, okay.

Like, I don't like that kind of ham.

Um, oh, I get it.

You were like, I don't know, like 'Cause we used to, they would like, when we would go to like Thanksgiving, I guess it was, at our family's house, it was always honey baked ham and I would—

Your face!

It's like your first experience.

All right.

It's just like, I'm just thinking about it as a child and being like, it looks, it looks almost fake.

It took you a while to push through to eat a real ham.

Yeah, a fresh ham.

Yeah.

And then, um, Having a fresh ham and realizing it's not a Honey Baked Ham. I like it.

If you default— Oh my word. The fourth method. So that was a mix of a little bit of an heirloom farm. I spent over an hour doing this. Owner financing through family. Do you see what's wrong? And it's a 30-year mortgage. And my dad's passed away. I don't think it's captured on this. The estate— The— I'm blurred out. I'm blurred out. Jonah was down for the moment. I just needed one per— I just needed somebody. That's something you can't test on that big camera. It doesn't have that flip-out screen like this camera. I'm sending it back. I think maybe I could try to do it again when my other camera gets back from the shop. My main shooter's back. Or Just go for it outside. I hate that though. I'll have to say all that again. Hour and a half. I mean, it wasn't an hour and a half of me talking. You know, it's little breaks and stuff between. All right, well, I'll look at it this way. We want to end this on a happy, happy note, happy day. I got a good practice today. And the next one will be so much better. So the final product will be so much better.