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Chucky
08-29-2003, 12:27 PM
I have a lot of memories, some of them good, some of them bad and some seemingly faded away. I guess the older you get the more you have and the more you cherish them. Here is one of my faded memories, I had seemingly forgotten all about it. It's funny how the memory works. A couple days ago Breeze posted his exercise routine which brought back a memory so vivid it was like it happened yesterday.

I was 12 years old and I spent my summers on my uncle's farm. He was a dairy farmer and had lots of cows. This summer when I arrived my uncle says I have a job for you and took me out to the barn. It was mid-afternoon so the barn was empty except for this little calf laying in a corner on some straw. She seemed so insignificant in this big barn. My uncle then tells me she was born during the night and her mother died giving birth. At the time I didn't think much of it, these things happen was my attitude. My uncle says you will have to feed her from a bottle until she can drink from a pail, probably 4 or 5 days every 3 or 4 hours. Then he says pick her up every day and when she's full grown you'll be able to lift 700lbs. Well I took care of her and she thrived, I picked her up everyday. I loved that heifer, I named her Beauty, she was my pet. I think she thought I was her mother. Anyway when she was about a month old she decided to have no part of being picked up so that ended my weight training. She never forgot me though, when I visited she would always come running to see me. My uncle kept her until she died of old age well into her twenties. Beauty was a good one, she couldn't run and fetch but she had lots of love.

I would like to thank Breeze for jogging my memory on this one.

Chucky

Onemangang8
08-29-2003, 03:29 PM
This your "threadkiller" thread, Chucky? ;)

Well, your story jogged my memory of a calf story.

It's really my brothers' story, but what the hell, I was there, too.

In highschool, we took a Future Farmers of America class, (FFA for short, and Ag. class for shorter) and part of the class was to raise a farm animal(s) and sell them at the livestock auction at the end of term.
My brother was a year ahead of me in school so he went first.
He decided to raise a calf.
We went around to various farms and ranches til we found one.
As far as I can remember, she was a Holstein, with white and black splotches over a brown base.
He named her Baby. (original, eh?) ;)
Anyway, this calf was cute as can be, but stubborn as hell.
During the show part of the auction, you have to show your animal to the judges and depending on what you have, depends on the the tools you use to showcase it.
In my brothers' case, he had to use a show staff, a kind of long fireplace poker looking thing that you use to get the animal to move by doing something to the feet. What, I'm not sure of. (but I digress)

Where was I? Oh yeah, the calf was a stubborn one. :rolleyes
Like Chucky, my bro had to bottle feed Baby for a while and he found out that she would suck his thumb when he tried to get her to take the bottle one day.
He managed to get her to follow him through the pasture just by sticking out his thumb like a hitchhiker.
This was a good thing, and a bad one, as it turned out.

While showing her at the showbarn, one of the judges, some little old lady, decided to check Babys' teeth. Imagine her surprise when she found herself in a bovine oral suckfest. ;)

Ahhh, memories.

How's that for a threadkiller? :omg8

mica
08-29-2003, 04:29 PM
Ah the memories...
Trying to ween my youngest daughter off the baby bottle was hell. We tried everything...and she cried. I hate when they do that....don't you? But she was 2 years old.
Well I finally came up with a bright idea one day. Told her there was some baby cows on a farm down the road that were really hungry. Mamas milk had dried up. I told her seeing, she was such a big girl now, what would she think about taking all of her bottles over to the farm and giving them to the baby cows. Her eyes lit up. She thought it was a great idea. Of course, bad part was we had to fill them all up first, which she was quite happy to help me do.
Off we went to the farm. I drove up there, hopeing the farmer wouldn't notice. She looked at the cows for a minute or two. Then we placed the bottles next to the fence and hopped back into the car real fast and drove off. She was waving out the back window of the car saying, "enjoy, I'm a big girl now". Never ever asking for one again.

PS: wonder what the farmer thought when he found them.

How's that for a thread killer?:mica

DannyBoyUK
08-12-2005, 10:14 PM
What would be the real threadkiller would be the story of my client who had "a relationship" with two cows on a farm where he was performing community service after being convicted of screwing his two pet dogs!

Somebody in the probation service sure messed up on that particular placement!

lab
08-15-2005, 02:09 PM
I agree with that assessment!

I found your story heartwarming Chucky, even though it is quite old.