This little calf was born on our farm last spring and he ended up as a bottle calf. There's a funny little story to go with the painting too.
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| Roscoe 12x12 oil on canvas |
In the spring, my husband checks the cows often to be sure they are all okay and having no trouble calving. He watches that the new calves are being fed and cared for by their mothers. Sometimes a heifer, a first time mother, will abandon her baby! One Sunday morning he found two calves on two different farms who appeared to be alone. Pa watched them all day but no mother cows came to care for them. He was finally able to identify one calf's mother and by putting them together in a stall in the barn, he got the cow to start feeding her calf.
The other calf was not so lucky. We could never identify the mother so we brought her home in the floorboard of the truck and started to bottle feed her.
We named her Rosie.
Look at those long eyelashes!
Pa got plenty of help giving Rosie her bottle.
Rosie always wanted MORE!
What a milk mustache!
About a month later, Pa noticed something about Rosie. He said, "Peg, we're going to have to change her name to Roscoe." Yes, lifelong farmer Pa didn't pay attention to which baby calf he reunited with the cow. One was a bull and the other a heifer. The one we were bottle feeding was the bull.
Rosie was a boy!
I can't believe we didn't notice that sooner!
So Rosie became Roscoe,
and our daughter said, "Pa, you're slipping!"
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