A Day In The Life of a Ranch Hand During Calving Season: Part I – Night Checks

11:50 PM: I groan as I roll over to shut off the alarm on my phone, playing music way too cheery for this tired young lady after only 2 hours of sleep. I rub my tired eyes as I sit up out of my warm bed, exposing my bare arms to the cold air that fills the room from the cracked window. I quickly bear crawl around the room, grabbing the barn clothes I left out just for moments like this. When I’m fully dressed in sweatpants, sweatshirt, Carhart jacket, stocking cap, gloves, and my all-important Muck Boots, I grab my flash light, bracing myself for the cold that awaits, I close my eyes behind my glasses and head outside to the barn next door.

12:00 AM: I walk into the corral to find the heifers all comfortably laying down in the clean straw. Careful to not wake them, I walk around the edge of the corral, checking to see if anyone has started labor. Most night checks, I simply find sleeping heifers, but tonight, I hear grunting coming from inside the barn. As I head inside, I spot a heifer lying on her side with two little feet coming out of her. Since I have seen both front feet and they are coming out pointing up, I know all is good so far. I head back into the house and will check on her in thirty minutes.

12:30 AM: As I am walking up to the barn, I hear a low bawl and I know that she has calved because she must be talking to her baby, it’s a different kind of bawl than normal. I walk in and see the heifer standing over her baby, licking it clean and talking to it. All is in order and Mom is doing her job, so I leave them to be until the next check in an hour and a half.

The night goes on like this for the next 7 hours, someone checking every two hours between my fiancé and I. We have been doing this now for a month and a half, but oddly enough, even though we are tired, there is still nothing more precious than a happy, healthy calf, wobbling over to mom to get its first milk. We love what we do and I’m not sharing a day in the life of a ranch hand to get your sympathy, I just think it is important to share our story and let people understand what happens on farms and ranches, day in and day out. Then all my friends back in the Twin Cities and beyond can see what it means to live on a ranch in McLaughlin, SD.

These Great Creatures

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you are being chased by something and you are running as fast as you can, but you are not going anywhere? Have you ever had this happen in real life? Unfortunately, about two weeks ago, I did.

I have not told many people because, initially, I was embarrassed that after all these years of working with cattle that I let it happen to me. But there has been this festering inside of me, this irrational fear that is trying to make its way to the surface and I feel as though if I get it out, I can feel truly myself again. I also feel that God saved me on that cold day to teach me a lesson and to share it; that these great creatures we love are exactly that, creatures.

This is not the bull from the incident, but another one on the farm.

So now I’ll get to the story.

About two weeks ago, I went and rode my horse, Dusty. In order to get to the pen that he stays in, I have to walk through a pen of 47 heifers and 20 some bulls. That day there was an old Charolais bull standing in front of Dusty’s pen. He looked like he didn’t feel well and paid no attention to me as I walked by him three or four times getting things for Dusty.

About an hour later, I was asked to go check on a bull that was in rough shape the night before. I figured it was the bull that had been by Dusty, but I headed out to the pen to double check and report back my thoughts. He had gone around the other side of the barn in the meantime, however. As I walked the length of the barn, I talked to him, making sure I was not going to scare him as I rounded the corner. Before I got there, I did as I had been taught when working with bulls, I mapped out an escape route if he were to charge, but I made a critical error when sculpting this plan, I misjudged the depth of the snow.

I didn’t want to make a sharp turn around the corner, so I circled out wide and continued to talk. I said, “hey there big guy” as I turned the corner to see his rear end facing me. He quickly swung around with his head in the air and this is when I knew I was in trouble. I turned to go to the nearest fence, but the snow was about three feet deep and my running got me nowhere, eventually causing me to lose my footing. Thankfully, he targeted my standing body and had no time to adjust when I fell on top of the snow, so he only ran over the bottom part of my legs. Also, thankfully, he had misjudged the snow as well and went flying face first into a large pile of snow. As I saw his body disappear into a white cloud, I knew if was my time to run. I sprinted to the gate, making it safely to the other side.

I stood there crying out of fear and pain, shaking with adrenaline. My fiancé came rushing over with a confused look on his face, not knowing what had happened. I looked at him and said between gasps, “the snow saved my life.” Yes, if the snow had not been there I may have made it to the fence, but I also may have not been fast enough. But because of the snow, he would have hit my entire body, not just my legs. If there had not been snow to cushion the blow, he might have broken my leg against the hard ground, but instead I am just bruised and swollen (still bruised to this day and applying muscle cream each night, but that’s better than a cast). Without the snow, he might have had the energy to come back at me. I was not alone out there that day; my guardian angel definitely was busy.

So as comfortable as we get with these beautiful beasts, please don’t ever get too comfortable. We work in one of the most dangerous jobs in America, but most of us have been doing it our entire lives, so we sometimes forget the dangers. Just remember, I walked past this bull three or four times before this incident and he didn’t even bat an eye at me. We need not be afraid, but always aware.

Because All Dogs and Cows go to Heaven

My favorite picture of the nice clean barn at Cindy and Ray's

Yesterday, I cried, hard, all day long, in the tractor, in the pickup, in the shop, everywhere. When I woke up, my mom had texted my fiancé and I for me to call her as soon as I got up. I knew something was wrong, but what had happened was never what I had imagined.

            “Hey Mom, what’s up?” I could hear the sadness in her voice as she said, “Cindy and Ray’s barn started on fire and they lost all the cows.” It didn’t sink in for a few minutes because that is what nightmares are made of. I wanted to sit and cry, but the cows out here in McLaughlin needed to be fed, so I got up and headed to the tractor. About half way through feeding, I got to thinking about all of the good times, good cows, and great memories I had in that place. I stopped the tractor and sat there sobbing.

            That barn, those cows, and Cindy and Ray are the reason I was sitting in the tractor.

            I had always loved cows, but when I started there at 17, Cindy taught me how to truly care for and love those ladies as if they were a part of your own family. Ray taught me to pay great attention to detail to ensure the best outcome for the cows and the farm, as well as how to be rational when it came to the cows. That barn taught me that calluses are your best friend when working a wheel barrel, to not put all your weight into a broom when your boots no longer have any grip left (I have a scar to prove this one,) and that no time in the barn with your sister is ever wasted (especially when you're creating parodies). Rudy taught me that there is nothing more precious than a good old farm dog. And those beautiful, amazing cows taught me that nothing worth having comes easy, that getting up early for cows is way easier than getting up for school, and that I want to spend the rest of my life working for and with these great beasts.

A cute baby calf and myself.

My sister, Laura, with one of our favorite cows, 106.

           
             I thank God every day that Cheryl referred me to work for Cindy and Ray. I would not be the person I am today had they not taken the time to teach and mentor me. I pray that all in the barn went quickly and that they are all waiting for us on the other side (because all dogs and cows go to heaven).

My Perfectly Imperfect New Years Resolution through a Horse Tale

Ever since I was little, I've wanted a horse. Not like crazy obsessed, everything in my room was a horse (not that there is anything wrong with that, my room just happened to be covered in cows). I think I never pushed too hard for a horse because I already had cows. I even had a cow I could hop on and ride around, but that desire for a horse still lingered in the back of my mind.

Before a trailride at the SDSU horse unit.

Over the past few years, when we would visit my fiancé's family, I'd ride every chance I would get. I even joined SDSU Horse Club for a semester because they did trail rides. Then this past semester, my last semester at SDSU, I decided on a whim to check and see if the Horsemanship classes had any openings right before the semester started and low and behold, the English Horsemanship class had one opening. So every week I got to ride and be with horses for two hours. I learned so much beyond just sitting on a horse and my thirst for knowledge would not allow me to stop there, therefore I wanted a horse.

Dusty and I in Kansas in 2014.

I knew I wanted an older horse that already knew how to work cattle and could help finish out my basic riding education. This is where Mr. Dusty came into my mind. Dusty used to live at Nick's mom's house because they took care of him for a friend. Before he moved to Kansas in 2012, Dusty was a feedlot horse, meaning he worked cattle all day long, everyday. Also he is 14 years old, making him a great candiate for what I was looking for. However, he's not perfect. He has some issues.

He has a condition called heaves, which basically means he's allergic to mold dust. So he has to live the rest of his life outdoors and cannot eat out of a big round bale of hay or any moldy hay.

Dusty ready for a close up!

He also has an attitude problem. He went from working all the time to pretty much being retired and lazy. This laziness created an ego problem. He thinks he's in charge and he likes to bite.

He's not perfect. No he's not, but neither am I. He gets a bad break from some people because he's not the easiest horse to take care of, but sometimes, I'm not easiest to take care of either. He bites. I had a biting problem until I was about three and I sometimes catch myself clenching my jaw. He's not perfect, but that's ok. As we look forward to the new year, we can both start working towards become better versions of the person and horse we want to be and a better team.

The day Nick and I picked up Dusty.

Therefore, my new years resolution is not to become perfect, to never try to be perfect, but to be perfectly me and to love those around me and never expect them to be anything, but perfectly themselves. And to get Dusty and myself back into working shape.

So I am not going to be a dairy farmer... at least for now.

When you were litte, what or who did you want to be? What kept you up at night, too busy dreaming to sleep?

Now take a moment, did you accomplish that dream? Are you that person? Are you still dreaming?

"Flicka" came out when I was in 6th grade. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it. It's the story of a girl, who lives on a horse ranch and falls in love with this wild horse. (There's more to the story so here is a link to IMDb for more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434215/.)

I saw this movie and that is what I wanted (only I wanted cattle, not horses). I wanted beautiful scenery, a beautiful man (a cowboy of course), beautiful cattle, a couple beautiful horses and beautiful sunrises. I drempt of minimal people, minimal profits, and idealy minimal snakes. But somewhere along the way, the world stepped in. I thought of careers that were more financially fit, more sensible, more stable, more... someone else.

Then I found the dairy industry. It was a job where I could have beautiful cattle and in some cases beautiful scenery. And I love dairy, I do, don't get me wrong, but... well, it's hard to explain, even to those closest to me. (For the sake of this blog post, I will not go into the details, that will be for another time.)

When I graduated high school, my friends would always joke that I was going to head off to South Dakota, find my cowboy who had a ranch, and never come back. I would laugh and say no I'll be on a dairy, but in the back of my mind, I would think back to Flicka.

Mobridge, SD. Not far from McLaughlin

No, life is never as glamorous as in the movies, but growing up, I spent my days in the pasture with our beef cows. It was my happy place. So started in Janurary of 2017, after my December graduation from South Dakota State University with degrees in Dairy Production and Speech Communication and an Animal Science minor, Nick and I will be heading to McLaughlin, South Dakota. We will both be ranch hands for a family owned ranch. I will spend most of my days with the cows, Nick with the corn and some days with each other.

McLaughlin, SD

So, no, I am not going to be a dairy farmer... at least not for now. I am young and alive and I would not be me if I never gave my dreams a try.

Runny Noses: Not Just for Humans

It is that time of year again, where the seasons are changing and it seems that everyone is getting a cold. And as it turns out, cows seem to get colds around this time of the year too.

I am one of the Fall cold victims myself and today at work, this beautiful little girl had a runny nose too. Just like I will do for myself, we'll keep an eye on her to make sure that it does not turn into anything more serious. Now if it does, the vet will be called to diagnose her and together we will set a plan of action for her to get back to being healthy and happy. Now if it does get more serious, this is where I would be very happy that vets are able to give antibiotics, just like doctors are. If I were to get a sinus infection, I would definitely want antibiotics, just like this little lady would be if she got an infection. Hopefully, however, both of our immune systems take over and we will be back to being healthy very soon!

Day 3 Miss SD: How Cow Shows are like Pageants!

Day 3 at the Miss South Dakota Pageant was super busy with production items. During the breaks, we all get to talking and I was telling someone how preparing for a pageant is like preparing for a dairy show. For those of you who are not from the cow world, you will think I'm crazy, but those of you who have shown might see where I'm coming from.

Pre-Show/Pre-Pageant:
Before the show you work constantly with your heifers on walking, just as a pageant contestant does with her swim suit and evening gown walks. Your heifers must keep their head high and strut their stuff, just like a contestant in the pageant. Also when you practice setting up your heifer, you emphasis her strengths and fix her weaknesses, exactly like when contestants pick swimsuit posses. You also work on slimming down your heifers to make sure that she is in the right condition and we are in the gym everyday, also watching what we eat. Then before the show you shave your heifer to show off her strengths and femininity. The pageant girls shave their legs to make them look as sleek and feminine as possible.

Miss America 2015, Kira Kazantsev, showing off all the work she put in for her walk.

Show/Pageant Day:
You get up early, shower to make sure you are fresh and clean, ready to go. Then you spend quite a bit of time doing your hair and make-up, to help emphasis your strengths and hide your weaknesses. Showmen get up early (or don't go to bed at all), give the cows bathes, then style the hair on their spine, or "top line," to make her look as straight across her back as possible, as well as sharper (thinner) throughout. We even rat our cows tails like a good number of pageant girls will do to their hair.

My heifer, Rio, showing her style off with that straight top line and sleek black coat after winning.

In Ring/On Stage:
You get out their and let all of your hard work show, strutting and showing off all of the skills you have honed. And if something goes wrong, you smile and let the judge(s) see who you are and the work you've put in.

My sister, Laura, supporting me through everything.

Support:
Both of these amazing activities would not be the same without all of the support. In my show life, as well as my pageant life, my family has been the key to my success. I could not have made it this far without any of them. Tomorrow I will go more in-depth on this, but I cannot thank them enough so why not thank them in this blog post too?

Why Chocolate Milk?

The second question I get asked the most is why I chose my platform, "Chocolate Milk: Building Healthy Bodies and Kids One Glass at a Time?"

When I first signed up to compete for Miss Brookings, I asked a friend who had done pageants, how do people choose a platform? She said to pick something you are passionate about, as well as know a ton about because the judges will ask you a lot of questions on it. Once she said that, I knew immediately that I was going to do something within the dairy industry. Then I got to thinking and realized that I had to do chocolate milk.

My own running shoes with my great #buildit lases!

Chocolate milk. Why so specific? Because chocolate milk tends to get a bad reputation. Often, people consider it to be too high in sugar to do any good. So I decided that it was my job to help people understand that chocolate milk, on average, only has 24 grams of sugar, which puts it right in the middle of all of your fruit juices and sports drinks, while still containing milk's 9 essential nutrients. It also has less than half the amount of sugar than one can of Mountain Dew. And studies have shown when chocolate milk is taken out of schools, overall milk consumption drops 35%! I had to fix that problem! I also knew that I needed to get the word out about the amazing refueling power that chocolate milk has. It has a scientifically proven 3 grams of carbohydrates to 1 gram of protein needed for ideal protein degradation in the body. So if you want to use your protein as efficiently as possible, you need to drink chocolate milk. I, myself, have been refueling with chocolate milk after I workout every single day and I am so thrilled with the results of my hard work!

Who doesn't love a cow selfie?

I also picked chocolate milk because I wanted to help promote the dairy industry I love so much! Farmers and cows have taught and given me so much, it is the least I can do for the industry I am so proud to be a part of! So drink up that amazing chocolate milk! If you want more information about chocolate milk, visit builtwithchocolatemilk.com.

Success: Learning to Lose

The fourth point of the crown I am going to talk about is Success. And I believe in order to be a truly successful person, you need to learn how to lose and keep moving forward.

This past Saturday, I learned a very valuable lesson about not only success, but also what to do when you do not accomplish your definition of short term success. I helped out at the South Dakota Special Olympics Summer Games in Brookings. I was able to hand out awards all day long and it was such an amazing experience to see these kids triumph. But it was also so great to be able to see how they handled disappointment. The special olympics to these individuals is something that they look forward to and love to compete in, so when they don't achieve their goal (or their idea of success), it can be very disappointing. There were some amazing kids that looked on the bright side and were happy for their friends or for just the ribbon they got. Although not everyone can handle losing that gracefully. I know throughout my life I have struggled with this as I am naturally a competitive person, like many of these athletes. A handful of them were telling themselves things like "be happy with what you got," or "you're okay," both very useful when trying to smile for pictures after a disappointment. Then they would tell me about their next event and we would talk about how they still had more chances to bring home the gold. They would forget the past and look towards the future.

This experience is definitely going to be one that I will remember for the rest of my life and will help me the week I am out in Hot Springs. As a rookie, I am very nervous, to be completely honest. But I am going to stifle, just a little bit, the competitive Maggie and let the good times roll. After all, I am told that the week in Hot Springs is so fun and I will be able to hang out with fifteen amazing young women with such a variety of interests and experiences. I look forward to getting to know each of them better and learn about their passions. I am going to take the week one day at a time and soak up every second of the experience because at the end of the week, I will know Miss South Dakota, whether it is one of my amazing Miss SD Class of 2015 sisters or by some chance, myself. And how many people can say that they personally know one of the girls on the Miss America stage? Not many! I am also going to take the strategies from the amazing young men and women of the special olympics and look forward. No matter what happens June 20th, I still have a crown that I get to promote chocolate milk with and that is all that is UDDERLY important! (cow pun!;))

Happy June Dairy Month!

Today is the start of June Dairy Month! June is dedicated as a month to promote the dairy industry all across the United States and I am so happy to be a part of this! The past years I have posted something every day and this year will be no different. I will be posting on my Instagram and Twitter accounts a fun fact everyday of the month or just a fun dairy thing I see! You can follow me at @maggiejo20 on both of those accounts!

 Tonight I am staying in quite a nice hotel and they have a picture up of Holsteins on the wall. I thought, "wow only in Wisconsin would I find dairy cows in a nice hotel." So I snapped a picture of the picture and that was my June Dairy Month post for today on Instagram.

And today's tweet was all about my internship. This summer I am doing a study that involves manure and I have to clean the manure then squeeze out the water and weigh it. So as I was doing this, the farmer walked by and gave me the weirdest look. I couldn't help but laugh because I love doing research and being in the barn and he was just so disgusted.

I hope you keep up with all my posts and enjoy everyone else's June Dairy Month posts that you can find at #junedairymonth.

TBT: California and Finding Independence

Today I got very nostalgic as my second internship for Cargill is now full swing, thinking back to my time spent in California with Cargill last summer. I traveled almost 2,000 miles from all of my family and friends to pursue my dream internship; performing research on hundreds of calves and working with dairy producers to help improve their farms. I ended up meeting the most amazing people and put 9,000 miles on my vehicle, but learned so much as I travelled parts of California, Utah and Idaho.

I always thought that I was an independent person, but I never learned true independence until I had to find my way alone in so many strange cities, including Oakland (because of course I had to visit another Major League Baseball stadium.) I learned to be strong and stand up for my friend at midnight in a sketchy emergency room because they would not listen to us. I learned to take peoples' harsh words (because I was a white girl from the Midwest on their farm) with a grain of salt. But more importantly, I learned that no matter where I go, I want to help dairy farmers more than anything. They are my inspiration and my heroes. I hope that one day I can truly impact all of America's dairy farmers with my promotion or my research.

TBT: How I Got My Start in Public Speaking

As a Speech Communication major, I get asked all the time why in the world I would subject myself to the torture they like to call public speaking? And honestly, I love it. I love having the attention of everyone in the room, making them laugh, maybe even making them cry. I love more importantly talking to people about my passion for agriculture and helping them to understand and love it just as much as I do.

This easily started with my involvement in 4-H. The picture of the young lady making Kool-Aid was the six year old, clover bud in 4-H, Maggie making her very first public speaking appearance. I started from a very young age, with very simple topics, getting up and talking to people, educating them. My family said from that moment they knew I was made for the public speaking stage. Over the years, I did more and more activities that got me up in front of a crowd and actually was selected as the Public Speaking Contest Champion in my last year of 4-H.

I simply love the thrill of watching my audience. I love the feeling I get in the pit of my stomach as I am about to speak. I love the feeling of accomplishment when the speech is completed. And more importantly, I love the feeling that I made a difference in my audiences day and hopefully their lives.

New Name and Welcome

For those of you who have read my blog before may be wondering why I changed my blog from A Cow Story to The Farming Beauty Queen. Well in March, I was crowned as Miss Brookings and to help promote my platform, "Chocolate Milk: Building Healthy Bodies and Kids One Glass at a Time" and to help people get an idea of who I am, I am changing my blog's name. I am no longer going to just tell the cow's story, but also mine. Don't worry, I will still be chatting about my cows and the dairy industry.

For those of you who are new to the blog, welcome. I am a farm girl from Lakeville, MN that grew up on 200 acres with cows, goats, chickens, rabbits, and various other animals. I started working on dairy farms at the age of twelve, where I fell in love with the dairy industry. I just finished my junior year at South Dakota State University, where I am studying Dairy Production and Speech Communication, with an Animal Science minor. I am very new to the pageant world, but I have loved the first two months I've experienced. On June 18-20th, I will be competing for Miss South Dakota and I am very excited for this experience, hoping to put chocolate milk mustaches on the great faces of this great state!

Always Improving

Here I am working on a research project
 to help increase growth rates of calves.

"Simply doing what the previous generation did will not keep the farm competitive in the long run." Nor will it produce enough to feed the world's growing population. To me, this quote, taken from my Farm and Ranch Management class book entitled Farm Management by Kay, Edwards, and Duffy, really speaks to todays generations, both on the farm and off.

On the farm, we sometimes like to get stuck in our ways, getting in the mindset that it has always worked so why wouldn't it keep working. But we must challenge ourselves to keep striving for better. To keep pushing the limits of what we know and the success of our farms. Agriculture as a whole has made huge improvements over the years and many farmers have taken great advantage of this. I just wanted to post this to remind us to keep striving and improving.

Off the farm, this can remind each person who eats or wears clothes, that farmers must keep improving, like the rest of our lives. Our cows can't walk out to the pasture each day like they did on my grandpa's farm, but our cows can produce 1/3 more milk per day in a comfy barn.

How I Know my Cows are Happy:)

A few weeks back I was letting the cows out of the barn for the afternoon, I came up to this one cow and when I reached for her collar, I realized she was loose. She was loose all day long, could have walked out of her spot and right out the door of the barn, but she didn't, she stayed there. Why would she leave, she has everything she could have ever asked for there? She has all the food she wants and the ingredients are fresh, the recipe, which has been created by her personal nutritionist, is strictly followed. It is put together by "Cow Chefs" as I like to call myself, who have at least 2 years of experience in feeding. If she was not on the farm she would have to scavenge for food and wonder where her next meal is coming from. She has all the fresh clean water she needs, even enough to play in. She has fans blowing when its warm outside, cooling her down, and the doors closed when it is cold outside, to keep her warm. If she was on her own, she would be exposed to the elements, which would be really hard on her. Also when her udder gets full, it is cleaned to keep her healthy and milked out, keeping her comfortable. If it didn't get milked out when it was full, it would just stay full, and that would hurt. She also would be more prone to getting an infection. Then most importantly, she was surrounded by all of her friends, why leave when you can hang out with your friends all the time? She has the perfect life. Its like how kids have to live with their parents, who feed, clothe and care for them. Yes kids have to obey their parents rules, like when to go to bed and when they can leave to go out and when they have to stay home, but without parents, kids would be in a world of trouble. And that is how I know my cows are happy, they have farmers to keep them happy and healthy. Sometimes I think they live better than I do.

A Calf Story: Robert Joseph



Robert Joseph, just one day old.



This is the story of how Robert Joseph can to be in this world. It starts out the same as any story, a heifer who's just living her life to the fullest; eating, sleeping, training with her handler, and of course traveling the county going to shows, like any show heifer does. Until one day, the farmer thinks, "I bet she would make a great addition to my milking herd, I should breed her." So that night the farmer opens up her Stud Book, to pick out a very nice bull for her young star, Bobbie Jo. After looking through almost the entire book, she is about to give up, thinking that no bull is good enough for her hefier, when she stumbles across Man-O-Man. This bull has it all, the ease of calving, the high production of milk, and the looks; everything she was hoping for for her dazzling heifer. The next day, the breeder comes by with a straw of Man-O-Man for Bobbie Jo. And it must have been a match made in heaven because she took the first time, to the farmers delight.

Bobbie Jo at the county fair.

Over the next couple months, Bobbie started to put on some weight, was eating like a horse, and her udder started to form, her body was getting ready to join the milking force. Throughout the whole nine month gestation, everything was on track for Bobbie and things were looking great. But just like in humans, sometimes cows have trouble during labor, as was the case for Bobbie Jo. Lucky for Bobbie, farmers take amazing care of their cows, and the vet was called once the problems started to arise. Turns out Robert Joseph was just a little too big for his mother, but with a little help, he came out with no problem. After that, the farmer and vet noticed that Bobbie wasn't feeling well, she had an infection in her udder, called mastitis. But after a little medicine from the vet, she is feeling great and happy to be apart of the great milking team that is helping feed the nation, definitely worth giving up her crazy heifer ways.

As for Robert Joseph, he is in his own hutch, where he gets milk twice a day, and has grain and water all the time. Here he will live, until he is about a month old, then he gets to move in with others his age, like going to school. He as a very fun near future ahead of him.



Bobbie Jo at work, milking like the great cow she is!