My First Cow(s)

I have decided to make a post in memory of my first cows. Some of them died, and some of them got eaten. But they were still my cows, and deserve to go on to the blog.

This was when I got my first cow, Faith. My cousin was spending the night, and was one of the first people Faith met.  I did not get to give faith her a name, because she came with one. Before we got her we went to her farm to look for a cow to buy.  We went into the field with them, and they all ran the other way. The family that owned the cows said, "Oh, you don't want a cow. You want a pet that you can milk." They took us into the barn and their son brought two cows into the barn. One was named Faith, and the other Peppermint. My first thought was, why would ANYONE name a cow Peppermint? My second thought, well, when you have 800 cows, I guess you run out of names pretty fast.

The owner of the cow, witch happened to be their son, showed me how to milk her. When I walked over to Peppermint, she backed away from me. Then I turned to the other cow, Faith, to see her put her head into my mom's lap so that she would pet her. At that moment I decided that Faith was my cow, and that I would take her home, and feed her, and milk her, and call her George.

When we got her she was already bred. We took her home and stuck her in her new field.We say that she hit the jackpot when she came home with us. We put her new field in the middle of a peach 

grove. Jersey's are curious little cows. when something is new, they want to eat it. And lick it. And try to swallow it. So as soon as she discovered that peaches were edible, she ate, and ate, and ate, and bloated, and ate some more.

This was her baby. My dad had to help deliver him, because Faith was having trouble.

I named him Henry. At the time, Henry was the best baby cow name I could come up with. Later on I came up with Crumple,(Yes, Crumple) and Norman. 

 When you went up to the little red barn to feed them or just to say hi, he would be right there at the fence, waiting for you. If you got into the field to play with him he would fall asleep in your lap.

Faith would be there too. She thought I was one of her children. She would give me baths, and mother me, like she would Henry. It seemed like I had a baby brother. Henry would run around the field with his tail sticking straight up like a little race horse. He would do laps around a big pile of dead trees, and we would cheer him on.

 Faith got a nickname that would be the nickname of all the cows to come, and that name was Boo Tow. Boo for short. Boo is my name  for all things fluffy and cute. I use it on the ferret, I use it on all of my cows, I even use it on the cat. Parker tells me not to call his cat Boo. I told him that she should be PROUD to be a Boo.

Once Henry was nine months old, he turned. 11 yr old me could have been innocently walking through the field, going to feed them, when suddenly, I would be launched into orbit. Once I landed I would look behind me to see Henry, head down, in "Give me whats in that bucket or I'll throw you across the field" position. Then I would promptly run screaming across the field to the gate, hurdle it, and finally stopped screaming. Then I would turn around and see the bucket of feed in the middle of the field. Ugh.

Well, we don't need the bucked THAT bad, right?

Shelby