09/21/2026
How Sting got his name šā¤ļø
Sting was born on January 20, 2024. He and Buds are brothers, and Sting was the firstborn. Within a few days, we noticed he was getting weaker. On January 28, I finally convinced Ed to let me bring him home. We caught his mother and put her in the chute, but her udder was hard and she wasnāt giving him any milk.
The hardest part might have been talking Ed into letting Sting ride inside his truck! We got him home, got some milk into him, and he started doing better.
At the time, someone had beehives in the pasture beside our backyard. They worked the bees that afternoon. When I came home, Sting was pressed against our screen enclosure with hundreds of bees all over his mouth, face, and ears, stinging him over and over. A little black Angus calf must have looked like a big bear to them.
I ran outside trying to get the bees off him and started screaming for Ed. He grabbed a jacket, covered Sting, and carried him into the pool enclosure. We were both killing bees with our bare hands. There were so many.
I called the vet, who had me give Sting Benadryl and came out the next morning. Stingās face, mouth, and ears were terribly swollen, and he wouldnāt take a bottle. The vet treated him and showed me how to tube feed him. For three or four days, I fed him that way in our garage. I honestly didnāt think he was going to make it.
He stayed in the garage for weeks with a heater set at 85 degrees because it was such a cold Florida winter. The swelling cut off circulation to one of his ears, and he lost half of it. Then he got scours, so I was cleaning him and the garage twice a day. Once he could drink again, I was the only one he would let feed him. Sometimes it took an hour to get one bottle into him.
Looking at him now, I still canāt believe he made it. He is so sweet and well mannered, and I absolutely love him. We had him made into a steer so I could keep him forever.
Ed came up with the name Sting. After everything that little calf survived, it couldnāt fit him better. ā¤ļø
