Down on the Farm: A Different kind of "special" Baby

Here at the ranch the cows are having babies left and right. We now have 8 beautiful nearly identical babies running, jumping and bucking in the back. Every day I'm off I spend hours back there just watching them.

Down at the second ranch where we have 75 momma cows, they too are having babies. So far there are 14 of them there. All sizes and colors, as we bought most of them already bred. I go down there as much as I can so I can document and picture them for our records. One day last week when I came home from work, Gpa said in his sad voice, I think were gonna lose on our babies at the ranch. This always makes me sad. I asked him what was wrong with it. He said it was a lil girl baby and she just couldn't use her back legs at all, like they were paralyzed. Gpa being the softy he is went and bought momma's milk for her and began bottle feeding her because she has to be able to stand up to get to momma to eat. Every day he went down 3 times a day to feed her. Thank goodness she has a gentle momma who didn't want to run us down for messing with her baby. I read up on the Internet as to what could be her problem. It seems it's not an uncommon thing that when momma cow is ready to deliver they stand up and the baby falls to the ground. Sometimes this can cause injury if they fall wrong. So I read him the article and what it said. The next day we went down and after she had taken her bottle we began some physical therapy on her legs to keep her muscles limber, we stood her up and held her there so she could build up some strength in her legs even though she couldn't move them at all. The next day we applied some home made splints to her back legs as she was getting stronger and starting to move her back legs a little. Soon we had her up and nearly walking, although she could only take a few wobbly steps until she fell down. She is now a week old and can get herself up and walk "HURRAY" . She has trouble keeping up with momma but she is nursing some from momma and trying to travel about the pasture. We have named her "Puddin", and we still feed her but not as much because we want her to continue to suckle momma and bond with her. She sure is a doll.

"PUDDIN"