06/03/2026
What Nobody Tells You About Owning Livestock
There is a particular kind of reward that comes with owning livestock — one that has nothing to do with money and everything to do with meaning. You can stand in a pasture at dawn, overwhelmed with gratitude over the birth of a new calf, and find yourself at that same animal's side at midnight, tube-feeding, bottle feeding if you are lucky, and praying it holds on. The pay is not measured in dollars. It is measured in goals met, in lives tended, in the quiet satisfaction of watching animals, plants, and pastures flourish because of something you chose to do. This life gives your days a weight and a purpose that is difficult to explain to anyone who has not lived it.
Spring birthing season is still in full swing here at Cricket Creek Ranch. Yesterday morning — before a single animal had been milked or fed — Gary was out in the pasture doing his daily count. He found more babies. One calf in particular caught his eye immediately: still wet, her first-time mother working quietly to lick her dry. “It’s a bull calf,” Gary called out, as the little one wobbled to his feet and came straight over to greet him.
It was a beautiful moment. It was also the beginning of a long night.
First-calf heifers are notorious for uncertainty in their early hours of motherhood. They are willing, but inexperienced. We have lost more than one animal because we did not watch the bonding process closely enough in those critical first hours.
Colostrum — the mother’s very first milk — is not simply nutrition. It is the newborn’s entire immune foundation. Rich in antibodies, growth factors, and essential proteins, colostrum provides what a calf’s undeveloped immune system cannot yet produce on its own. The delivery window is narrow and unforgiving: every hour that passes without colostrum, the calf’s ability to absorb those critical antibodies diminishes. After twenty-four hours, that ability is gone entirely. A calf that has not received colostrum in the first twenty-four hours of life faces a 80% - 100% mortality rate. There are no second chances.
A full day of off-farm obligations for Gary and a full workday for me left little time to monitor the pair as we had hoped. Gary arrived home first, just as the last of the daylight was fading, and went searching the pasture. The dark, however, had swallowed them both. He called for reinforcements. It was close to ten o’clock at night when Timothy arrived with his thermal scope and made quick work of finding the mother and calf. Together, they brought the little bull to the barn.
We had colostrum on hand — saved from Miss Kay, one of our Jersey cows who had delivered just the day before. We bottle-fed him what we could. He drank, and then he slept. This morning, he was still there in the stall with Miss Kay and her heifer calf, resting quietly in the hay.
Whether we reached him in time and those antibodies were delivered in time to take hold, or whether we were already too late, I cannot say. But I can say we did everything we could to give him the best start. The rest is not in our hands. Only time will tell.
If you can, say a little prayer for this little guy and for his mama that spent the whole night calling for her baby.
He wobbled his way into our hearts from the very first moment — and we are rooting for him with everything we have.
