Unforeseen Circumstances: Day 2

Word Count: 12,188

Summary of Events:

After taking their things into the house, Weston took Andie on a tour around the farm, which included watching his father and the farmhands as they finished up milking the cows before bottles and buckets were filled for feeding the calves. Weston and Andie joined the hired hands in feeding the calves, with Weston giving Andie a tutorial on how to hold a bottle for a calf. After the first bottles had been emptied, Weston went back to get bottles for another two calves and came back to find a hungry calf sucking on most of Andie's hand…

Excerpt of the Day:

“I only meant to give her one finger,” Andie said.

“That’s alright,” Weston replied. “But she’d probably rather this anyways.”
Andie pulled her hand from the calf’s mouth, took the bottle Weston was holding out to her, and offered it to the calf, who immediately latched on and started sucking.

Weston offered his bottle to one of the other calves, who followed suit eagerly. When they were finished, Weston grabbed the last two bottles and he and Andie fed the last two calves that weren’t yet old enough to be bucket fed, but were getting quite close to the age when they would make the transition.

“They’re certainly hungry,” Andie said as she hung onto her third bottle.

“We’re feeding them only twice a day, when if they were out on pasture with their mothers they would be able to go up to their mother and nurse whenever they wanted, so they get a bit hungry between meals.”

“When’s their other mealtime?” Andie asked.

“After morning milking,” Weston replied. “Cows produce so much milk they have to be milked twice a day.”

“Oh,” Andie said. “When is morning milking?”

“We do seven and seven, as the cows are always milked twelve hours apart,” Weston replied. “It depends on how early or late the farmer wants to be up as to when the cows are milked. Some guys do four or five in the morning, but Grandpa established the routine as seven and seven, so we continue doing it as seven and seven.”

Andie nodded. “Why do they look so skinny?”

“Cows are built narrow compared to horses,” Weston replied. “And dairy cattle often look especially skinny because we’re not about fattening them up for meat, we want the milk.”

“Do these calves have names?” Andie asked.

“Some of them,” Weston replied. “But we’re not necessarily planning to keep all of them.”

“Why not?” Andie asked.

“Well, with the economy the way it’s been, Dad’s slowed down his herd growing a bit, so he’s only wanting to keep a certain amount of calves to replace the cows that are getting old, and then just a couple extras to grow the herd a little bit,” Weston replied. “So we typically try to avoid naming the ones we’re going to sell, as it’s not likely that their name is going to be retained by their new owner.”

“Oh, okay,” Andie said.

“But if there’s one Dad would like to keep that hasn’t been named yet, I’m sure he’d be willing to let you name her,” Weston replied.

“These are all girls?” Andie asked.

“No,” Weston replied. “These two are boys. Dad wants to keep this one for breeding purposes, and that one he’s probably going to sell when he gets older.”

Andie nodded as she handed Weston the now-empty bottle and then followed Weston back to the trailer, where the empty buckets had been stacked together by the others, who’d been keeping buckets going to the other calves. They were nearly done too.