Our #13 heifer's calf, and his story

We've had some pretty interesting cases of animal sicknesses here. And I a lot of them are things people have never seen before! But, with the help of many friends, we get by. This is the story of "Freaky", one of our heifer's bull calves. Within minutes after a calf is born, they will want to try to stand up, but this guy couldn't even sit up. He would keep swinging his head over and had no control of his legs. And the poor heifer had no idea what to do with this weird thing that just came out of her! We knew that he would be alright eventually, but this calf didn't have that kind of time. Calves need colostrum from their mother's milk asap in order to survive. So, with the help of Mike and Jesse (who had some of their cows out with ours), we herded the heifer up to the barn area into one of the pens that was next to a head gate/lock. Since this calf couldn't stand up to nurse, he was gonna have to get the milk somehow, so that's when I had to milk a basically wild (and mad!) cow!

We put her in the head lock, Mike/Jesse would pull her tail to the side so she wouldn't kick, and I had to crouch down right next to this literally mad cow and hand milk her one teat at a time! It was very interesting. And I actually had to do it the next day too! Luckily none of us got hurt, and it did work. The next day Freaky calf was standing and nursing, but this isn't the end of the story!... 

Here is how he got his name:

After a few days, I noticed that his eyes had turned a very milky blue color and were really popping out, like they were filled with fluid. So he is probably blind, but was still able to get around and nurse. Then the next day, I saw that his hind leg was bent badly, so mama must have stepped on it. This calf was looking a little freaky by now. With his white eyes and crooked leg. Not to mention how small he was (we think he was born about a month early), woolly hair, and his big head too. So me and Deloy casted the broken leg, which was the first time I'd done that too. And we put a shot of medicine in his eyes to hopefully help then clear up. He is on the mend now, and you can start to see brown on around the blue on his eyes too, which is good news! 

So, we don't have a farm, we have a circus!