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Although I grew up on a farm, I never owned a cow until Molly came into our lives in late May 2007. She was just a day or two old at the time, and had been born via Caesarean section to a neighbor's cow. After all that trouble her mother didn't want anything to do with her (and the neighbor didn't want anything to do with bottle feeding her.) So, Terry bought her and brought her home, the first "livestock" on our farm.
She was so tiny and adorable. Bottle feeding her was a chore I actually enjoyed doing. I spent a lot of time with her, sometimes just sitting on the ground outside her pen to keep her company. Needless to say, she became extremely tame and pretty darn spoiled.
She was a bit of an escape artist, and if we waited too long to feed her she'd come looking for us. There were several mornings that first summer where we'd awake to find her in our front yard. One evening, after arriving home from the state fair at around 10 p.m., she came bursting out of the shadows near the house and nearly gave us both heart attacks.
She's now in a more secure pen and has another cow for company. Thankfully we haven't seen her in the yard since this past summer when she broke through a weak spot in the fence and went exploring.
Just before Thanksgiving we took Molly to Terry's parents' farm to run with their bull for awhile. She's now back home, and we should find out soon if she's pregnant. If she is, her calf should arrive just in time for pumpkin patch season.
I never dreamed I would have a "pet" cow. And I'm sure that Terry, who has a degree in Livestock Management, never dreamed he'd have one either! But, even with the risk of making him the laughingstock of his college alumni, I'm pretty sure Molly will never make it to the dinner table!
