Post by jekkalynn on Feb 27, 2018 18:49:49 GMT -5
"You are never going to guess what I brought home for you today." Said my husband over the phone to me as I lay in our son's hospital bed.
"Something I can actually eat...or maybe something that will tempt Remington into actually eating?" I guessed quietly trying not to wake our son who I had just finally managed to get to fall asleep.
My five year old, Special Needs son Remington and I had been at the Children's hospital for 4 days and 3 night already. I was in bad pain recovering from some major dental surgery and my poor baby boy was suffering from a double ear infection and dehydration on top of his normal stomach trouble. It hurt to talk and I couldn't eat anything solid yet. Remy refused to eat or drink and was on IV fluids, antibiotics through his IV, and was getting medicine for his stomach through his IV. One of his ear drums had blown out and was still steadily leaking several days after it blew and twice a day we had to pin Remy down so they could put Steroid Ear drops onto the hole on his ear drum to help encourage it to heal.
Remy is what can best be described as a Defensive Puker...if you upset him he will throw up to try and convince you to stop bothering him. So every time we pinned him down there was a very real chance that I would be puked on...and I was quickly running low on clean clothes...
My husband who works long hours was too tired at the end of the day to drive an hour to come visit me or bring me more clothes or pudding so I was stuck trying to rush to get laundry done at the hospital while Remy was asleep and before the room we could use for laundry was closed for the night.
I was surviving on pudding, scrambled eggs and bowls of tomato soup that the kitchen staff kept sending up with every meal after they learned that I couldn't eat solids or leave my son, who is still mostly non verbal, for more then a few minutes at a time. I was getting 3 or so hours of sleep a night and was fast running out of the nice strong pain killers I had packed to take with me when I set out with my friend to take Remy to be checked at a children's hospital after our local hospital sent him home without any treatment earlier that week.
Long story short I was worn to a frazzle and getting very, very depressed as the days passed and Remy still refused to eat or drink ANYTHING!
"Well I guess you could eat her...but I thought you would want to keep her to someday be our milk cow..."
...wait...did he just say...
I quickly scrambled out of the bed and moved away from it so I wouldn't wake Remy before squealing into the phone "YOU GOT ME A HEIFER CALF!?!?!" I was Soooo happy...Soooo excited...Sooo...going to kill my husband.
"What were you thinking! We can't afford a heifer calf! And you know I don't want a Holstein. They are to big and produce way more milk then we would need and don't do well on just grass and and and...you didn't actually get me a heifer calf did you..." I rambled my brain going a mile a minute.
"She is a Jersey cross...I think...she is tiny...very healthy and lively but the smallest single born calf I have ever seen. There is a litle bull calf too born from a different heifer. Both heifers came in that big truck load from the U.S. and Jerry is just selling all the calves born to those imported heifers since he doesn't know anything about the bulls used to get them pregnant. I was loading up some big holstein bull calves to bring to Dad and jokingly told Jerry that I was taking the two tiny Jersey calves home because they were too tiny to bother sending to the auction with the other calves. He looked them over and told me to go ahead." My eyes popped out of my head. Two FREE calves. One of them a heifer...not just any heifer but a Jersey cross heifer...I must be dreaming... "I will probably have to pay him like $50 for the pair or maybe $50 for each. But not any more then that. They can live at my Dad's with the other bottle calves until they are older. Then we can build a pen at home for them and get some fence panels to make a portable roundpen for them to graze in every day." William explained sounding very pleased with himself.
Okay so not free...just dirt cheap. "I don't believe you...I won't believe you until I see pictures...send me pictures." No way did he actually manage to get me a healthy tiny Jersey Holstein cross heifer calf for $50. There must be something wrong with it...it was ugly...or it was weak and sickly...it probably had pneumonia and was two month premature like the last free heifer calf he brought home and got my hopes up with...I wasn't gonna get my hopes up until I saw pictures and had a chance to talk to William about this a bit more.
After receiving many pictures and talking much more and after we finally got to go home from the hospital. I was finally convinced. To cheer me up my husband got me a heifer calf...an adorable tiny little heifer calf of mysterious lineage but that was at least half Holstein...probably...the dam looked like a Holstein...who knows...
So here I am a month later. My calves are two months old. They have grown almost a foot from when we brought them home a month ago...so they are now about the size of most normal calves at birth. They are lively and eat well and when we tried working the heifer on a halter yesterday she figured it all out in 5 minutes flat and was happily following us around and kicking up her heels without getting tangled in the lead or yanking on it.
Fastest calf to figure it out that I have ever worked with.
Now I just need to figure out how to raise her properly and what breed she might be and what breed bull I will eventually breed her too or if I just leave the tiny bull intact and let him do the job before I send him to the butcher since he is just as tiny as she is.
"Something I can actually eat...or maybe something that will tempt Remington into actually eating?" I guessed quietly trying not to wake our son who I had just finally managed to get to fall asleep.
My five year old, Special Needs son Remington and I had been at the Children's hospital for 4 days and 3 night already. I was in bad pain recovering from some major dental surgery and my poor baby boy was suffering from a double ear infection and dehydration on top of his normal stomach trouble. It hurt to talk and I couldn't eat anything solid yet. Remy refused to eat or drink and was on IV fluids, antibiotics through his IV, and was getting medicine for his stomach through his IV. One of his ear drums had blown out and was still steadily leaking several days after it blew and twice a day we had to pin Remy down so they could put Steroid Ear drops onto the hole on his ear drum to help encourage it to heal.
Remy is what can best be described as a Defensive Puker...if you upset him he will throw up to try and convince you to stop bothering him. So every time we pinned him down there was a very real chance that I would be puked on...and I was quickly running low on clean clothes...
My husband who works long hours was too tired at the end of the day to drive an hour to come visit me or bring me more clothes or pudding so I was stuck trying to rush to get laundry done at the hospital while Remy was asleep and before the room we could use for laundry was closed for the night.
I was surviving on pudding, scrambled eggs and bowls of tomato soup that the kitchen staff kept sending up with every meal after they learned that I couldn't eat solids or leave my son, who is still mostly non verbal, for more then a few minutes at a time. I was getting 3 or so hours of sleep a night and was fast running out of the nice strong pain killers I had packed to take with me when I set out with my friend to take Remy to be checked at a children's hospital after our local hospital sent him home without any treatment earlier that week.
Long story short I was worn to a frazzle and getting very, very depressed as the days passed and Remy still refused to eat or drink ANYTHING!
"Well I guess you could eat her...but I thought you would want to keep her to someday be our milk cow..."
...wait...did he just say...
I quickly scrambled out of the bed and moved away from it so I wouldn't wake Remy before squealing into the phone "YOU GOT ME A HEIFER CALF!?!?!" I was Soooo happy...Soooo excited...Sooo...going to kill my husband.
"What were you thinking! We can't afford a heifer calf! And you know I don't want a Holstein. They are to big and produce way more milk then we would need and don't do well on just grass and and and...you didn't actually get me a heifer calf did you..." I rambled my brain going a mile a minute.
"She is a Jersey cross...I think...she is tiny...very healthy and lively but the smallest single born calf I have ever seen. There is a litle bull calf too born from a different heifer. Both heifers came in that big truck load from the U.S. and Jerry is just selling all the calves born to those imported heifers since he doesn't know anything about the bulls used to get them pregnant. I was loading up some big holstein bull calves to bring to Dad and jokingly told Jerry that I was taking the two tiny Jersey calves home because they were too tiny to bother sending to the auction with the other calves. He looked them over and told me to go ahead." My eyes popped out of my head. Two FREE calves. One of them a heifer...not just any heifer but a Jersey cross heifer...I must be dreaming... "I will probably have to pay him like $50 for the pair or maybe $50 for each. But not any more then that. They can live at my Dad's with the other bottle calves until they are older. Then we can build a pen at home for them and get some fence panels to make a portable roundpen for them to graze in every day." William explained sounding very pleased with himself.
Okay so not free...just dirt cheap. "I don't believe you...I won't believe you until I see pictures...send me pictures." No way did he actually manage to get me a healthy tiny Jersey Holstein cross heifer calf for $50. There must be something wrong with it...it was ugly...or it was weak and sickly...it probably had pneumonia and was two month premature like the last free heifer calf he brought home and got my hopes up with...I wasn't gonna get my hopes up until I saw pictures and had a chance to talk to William about this a bit more.
After receiving many pictures and talking much more and after we finally got to go home from the hospital. I was finally convinced. To cheer me up my husband got me a heifer calf...an adorable tiny little heifer calf of mysterious lineage but that was at least half Holstein...probably...the dam looked like a Holstein...who knows...
So here I am a month later. My calves are two months old. They have grown almost a foot from when we brought them home a month ago...so they are now about the size of most normal calves at birth. They are lively and eat well and when we tried working the heifer on a halter yesterday she figured it all out in 5 minutes flat and was happily following us around and kicking up her heels without getting tangled in the lead or yanking on it.
Fastest calf to figure it out that I have ever worked with.
Now I just need to figure out how to raise her properly and what breed she might be and what breed bull I will eventually breed her too or if I just leave the tiny bull intact and let him do the job before I send him to the butcher since he is just as tiny as she is.