Delta Foxtrot Tango, The Missing Mother’s Day Calf

Just wanted to let people know that Nathan wrote the whole story, but Life has gotten in the way of me posting it… Hopefully things will get back to “normal” and I will be able to post the remainder of the story (Delta has been thriving by the way and is a very nice steer..!)

Chapter 2, Part 5
Our search began in the rest of the girls’ pasture. Unlike commercial dairy and beef breeds of cows, our heritage Dexter calves are small, especially while doing “the opossum nap”. This nap is when they lay down and look like they are dead like an opossum would do when it’s threatened. We found nothing in the girls’ pasture, so we searched the yard; the hay barn, chicken coop, garage, the wood lean-to, the patio, under the deck, under the bushes, in the flowerbeds, around the front porch, and even the pond... Nothing. Mom began searching around the boys’ pasture, walking the entire perimeter on foot. Then she went IN that pasture. This is where we keep all our steers and bulls, so she has to keep her eyes OPEN because even though they are all command-trained, they can be fiesty! While Mom was walking, I hopped on the atv and began driving on the east field every fifteen to twenty feet apart, back and forth across about 40 acres, but due to Delta being dirt color, he would look like a clump of dirt left from the discs. I went from one end to the other, up and down, up and down. There was nothing. Mom was done in the boys’ pasture, so we walked around more. We found a few tracks in the dirt, but they could have been from my beagle who was helping. I was very upset… there wasn’t even a vulture in the sky to show where he might be laying hurt...

Chapter 2, Part 4
I woke up Monday morning, ate my breakfast, and went outside to do the animal chores. Mom had done night calf watch on Mother’s Day night, and so it was my responsibility to do all the morning chores. I went straight to the cows to tame Delta--that’s what I named MY bull calf, NOT Mudflap like Dad said!--and the other two calves that had already been born--Joy, and my mom’s little bull calf, but Delta was missing!!! My very first thought was that animal rights activists had stolen him like they did to someone’s little goat on Mother’s Day a few years ago, or that someone stole him to sell for money or beef, or he walked right through the fence like the other calves have because stupid government guidelines want the fence to be high enough for wildlife like rabbits (hopis afraidus) and coyotes (eatabis anythingis) to get through, but Dexter calves are only the size of adult Beagles and can roll under or walk right between the wires! I ran in the house to tell Mom, and we quickly did the animal chores together then begin our search…

Chapter 2, Part 3
Dad and I made Mom a steak dinner--OUR steaks of course!--and mashed potatoes with chives I picked from our garden myself, and cauliflower. It was sooo good, if I may say so myself! Both Mom and Dad are pretty great cooks, and are teaching me to be self-sufficient. That means I can grow, harvest, prepare, cook, serve, AND clean up an entire meal all on my own. Mom says I have “bragging rights” because I’ve been able to accomplish a whole meal from start to finish since I was only ten, and there are grown adults that can’t do all that. I don’t like to brag, so Mom brags for me--it’s embarrassing sometimes, but Grammi said that is what Moms do. I put all the dishes in the dishwasher then went out to check “helicopter mom”, as Mom called the new mother, and she and her huge calf were still out in the electric fence area of the girls’ pasture. I went in the house to tell Dad the new calf is still in the fenced-in area (because Mom had asked us to put them up with the other moms and calves), took my shower, played a few rounds of my video game, then went to bed. I guess Dad and I both forgot about that calf being loose in the big pasture…

Chapter 2, Part 2
I spent the rest of the day just goofing around outside. Mom was pretty tired after doing night calf watch for about six weeks so far, just for three cows to have their calves in the middle of the day when she was supposed to be sleeping, so I was trying to be very quiet so she could catch some sleep. I worked on hand-taming my new chicks for my egg chicken customers, and worked with my older calf Joy--the first one that was born this year. Joy is super special! She is very sweet and knows her name, and will come right up to you to get petted and scratched. I hope she will be a good momma like her own, and make a good milk cow someday! We finally could afford a REAL milk machine thanks to some really wonderful people my mom met, so now she won’t have to hurt so bad from hand milking. Mom had a lot of accidents as a little kid, including a bad fall from a stallion right here on our farm when her much older cousins put her and my aunt on him to ride him and he ran away and almost killed my mom when the saddle started falling off and she landed on a big rock! She spent a whole summer in the hospital and in a body cast then a year recuperating, and then years in therapy, but now has scoliosis and arthritis real bad so she hurts a LOT. She has to rest a lot. She says the doctors didn’t ever check her ribs or her back because her arm was broken so badly, and recently other doctors told her she may have even had a broken ankle and a punctured lung… I try real hard to help her and she says I am a Godsend and her “bestest blessing in the world”, but I wish she didn’t hurt so much.

Chapter 2, Part 1
Day starts pretty early on a farm, even on holidays. After feeding all my animals, and I have a few, then making my mom a pancake breakfast for Mother’s Day with my dad, and giving Mom her Mother’s Day present of flowers, I went outside and ran around to blow off some steam. Being reasonable with three of five calves due to be born soon, I went out to the pasture to check the mothers to see how they are doing. Dad’s black cow, Mom’s red heifer, and my dun heifer are all due any day. My black cow, Baby, had been the first to calve, right on Dad’s birthday, so odds were pretty good we would have a calf today because it’s Mother’s Day and that’s how things go for us. I went over to the girls’ pasture and saw my dun heifer, now officially a cow, with a wet calf and the afterbirth coming out of her butt. I ran in the house and yelled, “We have a new calf! We have a new calf!” We all ran out as fast as we could and went into the pasture. It turned out to be a great big dun bull calf. I was so proud of my little heifer! She had taken an extra year to get pregnant, but it was worth it! Dad suggested the smart alec name of Mudflap. Mudflap! Mudyis-aFlapidus. UGH! I had already picked out some great names for MY calf weeks ago, like Vulcan for a black bull, and Sandstream for a dun heifer. Mom took a few pictures, and since it was almost lunch time, we went inside to eat.

Chapter 1, Part 12
We hurried home (as much as you can in the ever increasing school rush-hour traffic in your rural little town...), washed our hands and wrapped up the offending finger in some paper tape, changed into those week old work clothes, and go out to see the newest baby, and sure enough, the brat cow (we say that lovingly because this dear older girl came to us pregnant and lost that calf, was skittish and subsequently cranky and kicky and wouldn’t ever let us touch her until THIS pregnancy where she suddenly became a Labrador Retriever and sought out scratches!) had an absolutely stunning heifer calf, BUT, the husband had NOT separated the mother cow that is missing her calf and now her udder is swollen and getting painfully full of rich milk, and SHE is trying to steal the NEW calf, causing the newest momma, who actually is still a bit skittish and shy (and yes, we are sorry we called her a brat because she is FINALLY letting us brush her without kicking or running away) a whole bunch of stress... So FarmBoy and I push the antagonist away so the new momma, named after a movie star that the husband likes her movies, can tend to her latest little celebrity—a stunning and shiny red heifer calf!—then we all go continue our search for The Missing Tan Turd...

Chapter 1, Part 11
By that time, we HAD to get cleaned up and take FarmBoy to the clinic to get the stitches out and have the doc approve your “doctoring” so you don’t have Child Protective Services banging your door down because your obstinate, self-motivated, INDEPENDENT teenage miracle-“Geritol” child was playing with a tree pruner... (not playing—that’s Momma being snar-castic—he was fixing it because like most of our stuff, it’s fallin’ apart), and we had to wait TWO HOURS... And THAT is a whole story unto itself, but FarmBoy checked out A-O-K and got a couple of little microscopic pieces of bandaging tape (for the $200 finger, well on his way to out-doing his mom, his dad, and his Grumpi in becoming the Million Dollar Man...) so we are on our way home, calling Dad because a dear friend and neighbor suggested maybe, just MAYBE the calf either made it all the down to the pasture next door to her, or maybe even it was on the road in the night and someone picked it up and dumped it in this much more visible cow pasture where there were several other calves... Nope, BUT... VIOLA! The husband’s brat cow had calved while no one was home!

Chapter 1, Part 10
Defeated, your child implores you, because the thought is running through BOTH your minds that this precious newborn calf had been stolen--God forbid by insane animal rights extremists that target small farms like yours to exploit these baby animals to target kind-hearted gullible people into donating their own hard-earned money to a fake “cause” to end animal “cruelty” on farms--you decide you had better call the local PD. You are out of breath, out of options, out of patience, but the calm, sweet voice of the woman who answers reminds you that there ARE kind and wonderful people in the world, then you realize, you actually know this dear woman! Thank Heaven! She makes some fabulous suggestions, offers to post the calf on their social media page, and wishes us the best of luck finding him, assuring you he is probably just hiding in some tall grass... You are encouraged, and very appreciative, but not very hopeful that this newborn survived the chilly night alone, ALMOST hoping it actually HAD been stolen by someone who knew how to bottle feed a calf...

Chapter 1, Part 9
Nothing. Absolutely NOTHING. You and FarmBoy walk around for two hours carefully searching around the entire pasture, with the man-child’s devoted little beagle in tow, nose to the ground. Not a footprint, a spot of blood, a tuft of hair... NOTHING! The beagle, Duke of Hazzard—Duke for short, Hazzard, well, because he’s always getting himself into trouble—did keep veering off to the north and running in the dense thickets, but he is absolutely notorious in his love for chasing a rascally rabbit, so, given it was a perfect rabbit thicket, and we couldn’t see or get in that HE barely fit and we couldn’t even see HIM moving inside it, and he had “that howl” that was his best rabbit-chasin’ howl, we figured it was just rabbits because that’s USUALLY what he tracks unless we actually find FOOTPRINTS, of which there were none. You send the FarmBoy on the atv to check twenty feet apart up and down and across the entire plowed 40 acres closest to the house to check, because the little turd that is missing is literally the same color as the dirt... Nothing. Back and forth on the ratty, rough-running kindly-donated atv for NOTHING!

Chapter 1, Part 8
So as you are slapping on those same cruddy chore clothes because it’s Monday and your wash machine was throwing you a code and refusing to do it’s daily grind very first thing that morning, “the most awful” is running through your mind... What the ever-loving /bleep!/?! I was out there every hour to hour and a half! I have the bedroom window open and I didn’t hear a THING! No coyotes, no dogs, not even an owl! No trucks stopping on the road, nothing! And with the goose disappearing Thursday night... Omgawd did someone steal the goose and case our farm and see “free bottle beef”?! Did they come back and just pick his sleepy little self right up and walk away with him because everyone was sleepy after the hectic-ness of Mother’s Day?! So you are pulling on your boots and falling down the steps out the door, bleary eyes as peeled as possible, already looking for blood or hair or tracks of ANYTHING...

Chapter 1, Part 7
Nothing. The husband’s darn cow was laying and chewing her cud. So at 4am I went to sleep because the giant man-child that towers over me had the finger wrapped up enough for him to manage the morning chores himself, which he very responsibly did! EXCEPT checking the NUMBER of cows and calves. Now, mind you, Dexters aren’t a super-excitable breed of cows. They kind of are the Mr. Snuffleupagus of cows... ho hum... So no bawling, no frantic pacing or nervousness... until around 10am when Chewbacca (oh yes, we have a ton of nicknames for the giant man-child, and Chewbacca definitely fits...) took his morning skippity-do-dah break from whatever homeschool project he is doing while I’m sleeping after calf-watch all night (we UNSCHOOL, and he is responsible for choosing what he will be working on that day... “post parturition cattle care and nutrition” I believe was the topic, but it could’ve easily have been the history and collector’s values of The Transformers toys... in any case, yes, he is responsible and does SOME kind of educational endeavor even if there isn’t written evidence of it...) and he comes charging in the house bellerin’ like a calf at weaning, “MOM, MOM, MOM! Get off your lazy butt! The new calf is MISSING!!!” Oh! My! Gawd!!! 😳

Chapter 1, Part 6
After 25 years of marriage, I SHOULD know that I NEED to double check... Oh, I did the calf watch all night, checking my husband’s cow who was as floppy as a melting marshmallow and ready to pop, never once imagining that the new calf and momma were still in the bigger pasture... In my defense, without my glasses (which I’ve lost and haven’t had time to search for or replace because I still have to do laundry and dishes and plant the vegetables and tend the little greenhouse and feed the giant man-child that can eat an entire roast chicken for a snack...) in the light of the headlamps, once you get beyond about 20’, you mostly only see glowing eyes and vague shapes... Glancing in the maternity paddock I saw several mommas, but my focus was on the next cow we figured was due any minute, and boy was she looking like she was going to go ANY second... so yeah, I did calf watch and checked on her several times Sunday night through early Monday morning as she impatiently paced back and forth looking for that perfect spot that would be ever so difficult for me to get to... you know—the FARTHEST corner, past the big patch of deep mud, farthest from any gate... still NEVER imagining that the new momma and calf were still in the less secure bigger pasture...

Chapter 1, Part 5
As I am sure you can easily figure out, after six weeks of very interrupted sleep, only to have EVERY darn cow calve during the day when you are SUPPOSED to be sleeping and your very blunt teen son barging in hollering for you to check on them, then a two and a half day puking migraine, I slept like a freaking ROCK. I mean like the infamous livestock DEATH NAP. I don’t think an air horn in my ear would’ve woke me up... but the incredible aroma of dinner did! My amazing chef husband and son team made me a fabulous dinner of, of course, steak and all the fixins. After that very satisfying and delicious meal of our own home-grown beef, I was sleepy again, knowing I would have to do calf-watch for the other pregnant cows, and assumed, yes, ASSUMED, my husband and son had put the new calf and momma up into the maternity paddock with the other new mommas and calves, where there is field fence down to the ground and no chance of calves rolling under it, to bond and be protected... and there was “The Massive Mistake”...

This is Sugar, the calf that “fell asleep” with her bum in the air while trying to stand up just minutes after being born—you can see she is still wet. Yes, she was totally alright, her mama let us check her without a fuss, and she was breathing and heart beating just fine, just legs locked and closed her eyes probably because of the bright morning sunshine right in her face then took a nap 💞 She gave us an angry side eye when we woke her up to make sure she was okay 🤦🏼‍♀️

Chapter 1, Part 4
Well, all day long, little Mudflap kept getting partially under the electric fence, whether momma was nudging him there with her exuberant cleaning and stimulating, or he was trying to escape his “overbearing helicopter mom” for just two minutes to catch a nap (Dexters are notorious nappers—or at least OURS are, and one of our calves even fell asleep with her bum in the air, just minutes after being born and trying to stand🤦🏼‍♀️🤣), but after a couple times—because Momma would freak out every time we tried to move him too far, he ended up scraping and very mildly burning a small strip on his spine—and I mean VERY mildly as in not blistered or scorched, just like if your hot mitt has a hole (ours ALL have holes because my dear husband has pretty much lit them all on fire...) and you burn your finger on a cast iron pan or a cookie sheet and it’s red and painful but it doesn’t blister and it’s fine the next day... So as I am shoving him under once again, after already taking a quick hot shower and changing into mismatched but clean clothes to feel somewhat “human” for ONE day—it IS Mother’s Day after all—I asked my husband and son if they would be sure to get the new baby and his momma up into the maternity paddock where there is tight-woven field fence that is NOT electric and super safe with only tiny holes and wiggly bouncy calves the size of Boxer dogs can’t just roll out, and after I was enthusiastically assured they would do so, I went inside to relax a bit since, after all, it’s Mother’s Day, and I just wanted to relax and watch a movie, but of course, there was nothing I wanted to watch! So I read... and promptly fell asleep.

Chapter 1, Part 3

If you know cows, they are VERY reluctant to leave the area where they give birth... or I should say, OURS are... I hear it’s something because the amniotic waters mask the scent of the baby and the blood and the afterbirth or something (or maybe they, like human mommas, just want a freaking BREAK after 24+ hours of contractions then dilation and baby-shifting and hipbones spreading, and swollen tender dugs, then the agony of the actual birth), but there really isn’t much blood, and the afterbirth for our breed of small cows is maybe the size of a deflated soccer ball and it dehydrates pretty quickly, so not much mess really, and maybe they are confused by all the crazy hormones and smells and the wiggly little creature that suddenly appeared out of their bum, but the “hard” part is all said and done in only about 15 minutes or less... So, throughout the day, I would go check on Mudflap, as he was so graciously dubbed by my husband who is so “wonderfully creative with nicknames”...

Follow and share and give us a good rating please, Delta and FarmBoy say THANK YOU!

Chapter 1, Part 2

So you jump out of bed and toss on yesterday’s chore clothes that can practically walk themselves out the door because they are actually a week old because you just came out of two and a half days of a head-splitting, body screaming, puking-at-the-smell-of-water (let alone the compost bin your child has forgotten to empty all week) migraine and have been helping SliceyDicey with his chores because he can’t get his hand wet because you can’t find a rubber dish glove big enough to fit over the huge contraption on the end of his finger... but... We have a small herd of lovely 100% grass-fed, hand-tame and spoiled little Dexter cattle, with a nice handful of calves due, and a few are first-time heifers that YOU, as a work-at-home rancher slash farmer, spent the last what, SIX weeks doing hourly calf watches every night ALL night except Friday and Saturday nights (which you still ended up doing those nights because you KNEW your husband and son—snoring like freight trains along with the dogs, were NOT...), but the darn turds keep calving during the day, of course, so “YOU GOTTA” go see what the darn heifer, I mean your son’s and his gramma’s first heifer that took an extra year to FINALLY get pregnant that he got to see the bull calf on ultrasound when she was pregnancy-checked and he is absolutely over-the-top excited about—brought forth into this world. Well, lo and behold, there is an absolutely perfect, HUGE dun bull calf, still mostly wet, with the new first-time momma just fawning over this gorgeous baby and literally bending over backwards taking care of him, BUT, the ding-dong gave birth to him RIGHT NEXT TO THE ELECTRIC FENCE.
..

(Hang on here folks... Like I said, the FarmBoy is homeschooled, so I have that to do on top of all the house & farm chores, and he is still writing it... we are trying to “catch you up” as quickly as possible...)

The Saga of Delta Foxtrot Tango, the Missing Mother’s Day Calf
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Chapter 1, Part 1

Picture Mother’s Day, breakfast in bed, blueberry pancakes from your scratch recipe (that apparently no one else can manage properly but still very much appreciated), receiving your card and your gift—an absolutely beautiful flat of I am sure carefully and artistically selected flowers because your son actually is very thoughtful and artistic—brought to you in bed while your eyes were closed (never imagining your child would lay a wet flat of flowers, dirt and all, on your freshly clean bed...), a lovely morning relaxing with a cup of coffee, then your non-stop young teen son—who recently sliced up the end of his finger wide open (a whole ‘nother story!) and required stitches and a finger brace to hold his finger—comes running in from him and Daddy doing the morning animal chores, and hollers at you, “get off your lazy butt, we have a new calf!” 💥 (Bless his heart, he takes after his momma with the bluntness, eh?🤣)

Howdy and Thank You!
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Howdy Everyone! Now that the wee calf is back and all settled back in with his momma, we just want to extend our extremely heartfelt “THANK YOU!” to all the incredibly wonderful folks who shared the posts and called local animal control offices and rescues and shelters and prayed and sent good vibes and everything and anything y’all did to help us find our young teen’s silly heifer’s newborn calf! We really can’t thank you all enough for the beautiful overflow of support from just soooo many people! 💖 The little bull Delta, so dubbed by our son, is doing very well and has been bouncing around with the other calves in our happy little homestead herd, and momma (both of us mommas actually!) is ecstatic and relieved (in more ways than one!) Our son is homeschooled, and as part of his Language Arts, will be writing the calf’s story to share, so if y’all are interested in the saga of “Delta Foxtrot Tango, the Missing Mother’s Day Calf”, stay tuned!