Isabella The Great

I was looking at pictures of Isabella when she was still a baby, so tiny and endearingly staring up at me with her big brown eyes.  And those eyelashes, my goodness, they must be a mile long!  My husband Joe and I would take turns feeding her a bottle; we believed it’s important to raise her on high quality organic milk. It paid off too, she grew healthy and strong and hasn’t been sick a day in her life.

We would take Isabella for walks in the pasture and showered her with attention (some would even say we spoiled her), hoping that she would always remain our baby.

But as time passed she went through that, I am too cool for you, get out of here before my friends see you phase and wound up pregnant.

Now she’s expecting her own baby this March. I wondered if she knows she’s pregnant. Does she feel different? Moody? Hormonal? I wonder if she knows that in a few short months her whole body will change and she will become a milk cow?

If you ask me I think that she thinks she’s a milk cow already. She hates it when we put her in the calf pasture, feeling that she’s above all that, but if we leave her with the milk cows she walks into the barn, through the stanchions and directly into the room where the grain is stored.  Nothing irritates me more than a cow with dirty feet walking in the mangers and getting them all icky.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve yelled at Isabella for doing this, and that’s how she earned her way back into the calf pasture.

In the next month or so I’ll bring her back into the milk herd and hopefully they will show her the ropes.  She is still a feisty teenager and I know from experience that as soon as her calf is born she will change. She will mature in an instant, her whole demeanor will change and she will become a proud mother and a productive milk cow.

I am still amazed at the instinct of cows, that they know how to give birth even when they’ve never done it before. Or they know to immediately get up a lick the calf clean. After the calf is clean the mother will then eat the placenta, I’ve heard that it’s to keep predators away. It’s also full of nutrition for the cow. The calf is up on its feet almost immediately and knows where to find milk. The colostrums the first milk the mother will give, and it’s full of antibodies and nutrition, which will give the calf a healthy start. From here the circle continues, we will care for Isabella’s calf until it’s her turn to become a mother and take its place in the herd next to Isabella.