Little miss Peaches is now 6 weeks old and thriving! She has quite the story..
We have been growing our herd here and there, little by little. Mitchell has been checking out an auction house that is about an hour away from us. He has made a few purchases on his weekly visits. One of those happened to be a mean old longhorn that was about 8 months bred.
Mitchell and his brother Lance got her out to our property where she didn't really try too much to become part of our herd. She mostly hung out with one of Mitchell's other purchases Lance named Snake (due to her having been a roping calf that at some point had her neck broken and never healed correctly).
On June 1st, while dropping off another cow purchase, Mitchell noticed one of our Dexter mommas, Smokey, was in labor. Later that evening Kaileyn and her family(who own the other half of the property) went out and checked on Smokey. She had successfully had her little bull calf by then. While out there she noticed the longhorn was down and didn't seem like she was able to get up. At first we thought maybe she was in early labor and struggling. Mitchell packed back up and drove back out there. He took her some food and sat with her for awhile until he felt pretty satisfied she wasn't in labor. But we still didn't know what was wrong. Sunday June 2nd, he went back out to the property to check on her. She was still down and not showing signs of labor or being able to get up. He called in some reinforcements. Lance, Julia, Kaileyn and TJ went out to help however they could. They unsuccessfully tried to force the longhorn into labor. At that point they had to make a decision, either they lose the momma and her unborn calf or they do a field c section and hope they could save the calf. So they did the c section. No.. none of them had ever done this before. Amazingly they were able to successfully get to the calf and get her out without any major complications. Unfortunately the longhorn momma didn't make it though.
The cute little heifer calf made it and went to stay at Kaileyn and TJ's house for a little bit. She got all the love and attention there. When I came back from Kansas and went to visit her, I had every intention of naming her Lucky because she was so very lucky to be alive. Kai and her kiddos had been calling her Peaches because "baby cow" wasn't working. I decided because they had already been calling her that and it was just too cute of a name, we would keep it Peaches. She stayed at Kaileyn's for a little over a week, then moved to Mitchell's parents house where she will stay until she's weaned from goats milk and big enough to rejoin the herd, though I expect that she will not want to join them as she will have been raised with lots of people interaction and dogs. She has no idea she isn't one of them.
For those wondering why Peaches isn't staying at our house.. unfortunately the two cows we currently have at our house have both had coccidiosis and we couldn't risk exposing a vulnerable calf to that. Also, our mastiff pups aren't a fan of cows and have attacked Magnolia and Maple. Until they have learned to leave my cows alone, we don't want to bring a baby who cannot defend itself here. We're working on it. So for health and safety, Peaches is staying with family.
On a side note, if you need cuddle pictures with a sweet baby cow let me know!!
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