Violet's Lucky Chance- A Story for a Snowy Sunday

Tay-Rae came to stay with me for the weekend on Friday! After church this morning & some lunch we got ready to head out to meet Mama, to get Tay home. Old Man Winter had other ideas though. It's snowing like crazy out there. It just started & we already have 2 inches. 

Is it really March? I'm starting to wonder. . . 

Anyway, this is us, stuck in my dorm for the day. Maybe we'll try again tomorrow. She isn't very happy.

So, last time I promised to tell you the story of this little guy: 

Well, this is my baby boy Chance, more formally known as Violet's Lucky Chance. He's the last calf out of the very first Simmental cow that came to Triple H Simmentals & started it all, Violet.

( I know. I just look adorable in this picture, but she decided to moo in my face. That's my story & I'm sticking to it.)

We bought her from Cason's Pride & Joy Simmentals at the Hawkeye Simmental Heifer Sale the fall of my 5th grade year. I'd already been in 4-H for a year, but both of my parents had shown cattle & they wanted me to give it a try. (Little did they know, they were gonna be in over their heads before long. Daddy didn't know how hard his little girl would fall in love with Simmentals.) So my dad & I headed to the sale barn & picked Violet out. Denny Cason quickly became one of my absolute favorite people in the world & was there whenever we had a question or just needed a little help. 8 years later we still go to him first to buy our heifers & bulls. I'm sure you'll here more on him, later.

That first year I showed Violet at our local fair & took her to another local show. Then at the end of the summer we took her home to the pasture to help start off our Simmental herd.  

Fast forward 7 years to the winter of my senior year of high school. A couple of days before Christmas, Violet went lame in the feedlot. Dad called out the vet, who said she was just low on energy & we needed to get her to the barn, where we could feed her on her own & give her some propylene glycol, which would help get her energy level up. Sadly, Violet never got back up. Around the middle of January, I told my mom that we had a decision to make. Violet was deteriorating fast & she was in pain. We knew she was pregnant, we just didn't know how far along. The vet said that if she was within 30 days of her due date, we had a pretty good chance of saving the calf. So a couple of nights later, on Tuesday, January 18th, the vet came out, quickly put Violet down & performed a C-Section to pull out the 80 lb. bull calf. 

We quickly fed him colostrum replacer (colostrum is the first milk a calf gets from it's mother that has important nutrients & antibodies to help protect the calf from disease at the beginning of it's life.) & dried him off. He was premature, we figured about 2 weeks. His hooves (which are the last part of a calf to form in the uterus) were fully formed & he had all his hair. However, he wasn't able to regulate his own body temperature, he wasn't able to suck the bottle on his own & when he tried to get up, it was like his legs were too stiff, so he had to have a bit of help.

Chance lived in our laundry room the first week of his life. I fed him every 6 hours & since he couldn't suck the bottle we would have to put a tube down his esophagus to get the milk to his stomach. Every day, he started to fight the tube a little more.  Finally, when I fed him after school on Friday, he was able to drink an entire bottle without being tubed. I was so excited that I called Mama at work!

The next day, we set Chance up in his own little corner of the barn & within 2 days he was walking on his own, bucking & kicking & playing like a normal calf. This is my baby a couple days after we moved him to the barn:

When he was 6 months old, I took Chance to the fair as a bucket-bottle calf, where he won his class, then was named the Bucket-Bottle Calf Champion.

Now, he's back on the farm. Dad & I talked it over & decided that he would be staying a little bit longer. This spring we're planning on selling his daddy, our old bull & pretty soon Chance will take his place as the head of the herd.

 Well, I think that's it, folks. I better get back to my homework. Tomorrow is Monday, after all, plus I think Tay-Rae needs a little entertaining. She's complaining about being bored. Oh, well. Such is life. 

I'll leave you with this pretty picture of a summer sunset at home. Should be here before we know it! (Hopefully!)

See you later, y'all!