Thursday, February 25, 2010

Bottle Babies

I was totally flattered yesterday. Let me start by saying, I did not grow up on a farm. I grew up in a community that considered itself a farming community, but it was really a bedroom community for the nearby Mayo Clinic and IBM employees. The extent of my animal knowledge was learned from our pets. My first pet was a 3 legged turtle named Stumpy. He died when I was 5. I very clearly remember asking my dad why Stumpy had ants all over him. Needless to say, I probably didn't visit him daily. My oldest sister had a pet bird, Chirpy. We were very creative with names. We did have a cat and a dog also. The only experience I had with cattle was walking through the barns at the county fair. Somehow, I apparently became an expert.

Yesterday we had a customer appreciation dinner at our local animal health store. For those of you city folk, it's basically a drug store for farm animals. During the meal, grilled steak, beans, and chips, one of the vets came and sat next to me. Two of the 5 vets have kids about the same ages as Cole and Tate, this was one of them. We talked about kids and preschool for a little bit before she shyly said "I have a question for you." Ok. She proceeded to ask how much she could feed a bottle calf without upsetting his stomach. Legitimate question since if you overfeed a human baby they'll throw it back up on you. I was just flattered since, well, she's a vet! I'm the kid who had a pet turtle that died! She's a very good vet, but has way more experience with small animals and sheep. I guess feeding baby calves for 5 years does make me an expert.

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