Bullseye - Born 26-03-2011
Bullseye was found early in the morning in the corner of the shed, a very small, weak calf with no sign of his mother. After looking around we could only guess that he had been part of a twin with another small calf born that night. He was so weak that many thought he would not make it but George worked his magic, feeding him every 3 hours and after a couple of days he began to get more lively.
We then tried to adopt him onto a cow that had lost her calf, this resulting in Bullseye getting rejected again, but this time with a broken leg for good measure. After a trip in the back of George's Discovery to see uncle Gareth the vet (the looks we got driving to Towcester were quite something) he again needed to be hand reared. This time a young 8 year old James started to help feeding him, teaching him to play with a football (no I am not joking) and trying to talk Tanya into letting him sleep with Bullseye to keep him company. One more attempt was made to adopt him onto another cow again resulting in him being rejected. After this he was brought up by us.
Move forward to today and Bullseye is still with us, a 1.1 tonne pet steer that keeps our main stock bull Brigadier company. As cattle are herd animals and Brigadier has to spend 9 months of the year away from the cows it was decide to keep Bullseye as his best mate. You can imagine James face when we told him that Bullseye would not be going for slaughter.
Miracle - Born 18-03-2014
Miracle was born with a very small calf with hardly any hair and a very badly deformed mouth in the form of an under bite. She was nearly put down as it was a "Miracle" she was alive but George along with Gareth the vet decided it was worth giving her a chance. Then we faced another problem: Miracle seemed to have the ability to suckle but her mother, who became known as Mrs Miracle, had massive teats that Miracle could not fit into her mouth.
For the next three months George milked Mrs Miracle every morning, getting enough milk to then feed to Miracle throughout the day. Another problem was the fact she had almost no hair and she seemed to be getting cold. After a few frantic phone calls one of our suppliers came up trumps with a Woolover calf coat in stock. Miracle would always go for a little wander whilst her mother was being milked much to the amusement of Bullseye, although her father Brigadier was not impressed that he had produced something like that.
Miracle's hair was now growing slowly but it was time to turn her out - she could now suckle on her own and had found out she rather liked the creep feed but now we faced another problem: the sun. Miracle's lack of hair meant that she would get sunburned easily so we made a quick trip to Tesco's to buy sun screen which we then applied to her a least once a day if not twice on really hot days.
Miracle is now a real little darling, still smaller than most her age but her hair has grown and feels like sheep's wool, she still has a slight under bite and is proof that we do care about our animals as she was not supposed to live. What a little "Miracle".
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