A Day in the Office

Calving season has begun up here on the ranch in Oregon, and that's not a good thing. The cows up here weren't supposed to be birthing for two more weeks, but one of the herds apparently got into some pine needles. Eating pine needles can lead to spontaneous abortions, so we're finding a lot of very premature calves out on the range. Some are stillborn, and some are okay, but most of them are somewhere in the middle. This leads to moments where you're hurrying to the shed with a baby calf in your arms, hoping you can get it close to a fire and feed it with a bottle so it might get its temperature and strength up and make it through the night. Your jacket's covered in calf shit (which, in case you haven't had this experience, is a whole world of nastiness beyond cow shit) and you're sitting on the floor rubbing the cattle's belly and praying that it'll stand up and be able to go outside again, and knowing that, well, it probably won't.