Greenhorns Should Never Buy Cattle

After living in Denver for fifteen years, my husband and I moved our family to the small Kansas town I grew up in. We were ready to get away from the traffic and crowds and raise our kids in wide open spaces. We purchased an old farm house in the country and set out to enjoy the good life.

My parent’s had raised a wide range of farm animals over the years and my husband was very intrigued. He got to know an elderly gentleman who came into the car dealership where he worked. This man frequented the local livestock auctions, so my husband told him he would like a calf and unknown to me, asked this man if he would purchase one for him at the next sale, as my husband couldn’t get away from work.

The next week, I got a call from my husband saying a man was bringing a calf and could I show him the pasture where it was going. Keep in mind our fences hadn’t been checked for soundness and we didn’t have any supplies or equipment as of yet for a calf.

I was envisioning a small calf, probably a bucket calf and so in my fifteen minutes of waiting for a man to arrive that I had never met with a calf I knew nothing about, I wasn’t to concerned with the state of my pasture fences. When the man arrived and I set eyes on this “calf” for the first time, I thought there must be some mistake. He looked practically full grown!

I showed the man where to unload the calf and away he went. My boys were fascinated but a little nervous about the size. We lived near a train track and just about that time a train began to pass by. In the country, when a train passes any rural road, it has to sound it’s whistle because there are no crossing arms on these roads. That was all it took. That “calf” barreled through the fence and into our garden. The kid’s and I shooed it back into the pasture. It took off across the pasture, through the fence on the other side and started across the neighboring wheat field at full speed.

Panicked and seeing dollar signs running away, I called my husband. He couldn’t get away from work! I called my parents, my brother and any friends I could think of in about thirty seconds and all of us started the great hunt for the “calf”. We still hadn’t located the “calf” hours later when my husband got home, but we continued looking until dark. For days we drove around trying to find it. Finally a friend recommended a free lost and found service in the classified section of our local newspaper. I was willing to try anything, so amongst the listings for lost dogs and cats, I had our lost “calf” posted. We had all but given up hope when three weeks later a man who lived two miles away called saying he had an extra “calf” in his field grazing with his cattle and had no idea how it got there. I rode over with my husband to “identify” the “calf” he had never set eyes on and that we had in our possession less than thirty minutes.

Sure enough, we had retrieved our money pit. Oh, we didn’t realize at the time what a money pit it was going to be. For a year we spent money to feed this “calf” and it never got any bigger. One day it seemed quite sick and so we called a veterinarian. The vet made a “house call”, gave the “calf” a shot and left. The next morning our “calf” was dead. The veterinarian diagnosed it with a brain aneurysm. Huh?