Whose calf is it anyway – the season where calves get mixed up and real moms don’t matter.
‘Tis the season, friend. We’ve started calving.
On the ranch where we live and work, herds rotate. So, some years, we have herds of mature cows, a.k.a. seasoned mothers. Other years, we have herds of three-year-olds, a.k.a. they’re not super seasoned, but it ain’t their first rodeo either. But this year, we’ve got the heifers, a.k.a. first time moms.
And because it’s their first time, there’s bound to be some confusion as to whose calf it is anyway. Like in the photo above – does the calf belong to the red heifer or the black white face heifer? Do you know? Do they know?
If you guessed the black white face heifer, then you guessed right!
In this case, both heifers knew too. The red heifer was just hanging out with the pair. But sometimes when a heifer gets close to having her own calf, she’ll try to mother (and sometimes even steal) calves that don’t belong to her on account of all the raging hormones and her newly discovered maternal instinct.
If you’ve every been pregnant or birthed a tiny human, then you know what hormones are capable of – they make us so some pretty crazy thing, amiright?!
Hello! I’m Terryn – the wife, mother, food safety enthusiast, Stormy Kromer fanatic who has slightly (okay, a lot) random tendencies, dabbles in photography, and shares (maybe a little too much) here at FFB.