Dad guessed the calf's mother must have died, and the farmer didn't want the work of bottle feeding. I on the other hand was extremely excited to have my own calf, I was only 5 or 6 years old and it was a big deal. But, school was out for summer and I had nothing to do with my time other than farm chores....and now even more chores.
When we brought the calf home you could tell it had recently been rinsed off, actually it appeared to have been given the type of cleaning our cows only got the week of the county fair when judges determined a cows value based on the color of ribbon awarded. Blue of course meant the most money, then red and finally the lowest of the rankings being a white third place ribbon.
The calf may have came home looking like a new penny, but the next morning she was covered with the aftermath of explosive diarrhea. Not to mention the calf seemed weak, struggling to stand. By noon dad started to worry the calf would die and that was when we did a full body check of the calf.....
Farm kids see some stuff, by age 5 I had helped castrate hundreds of animals, pulling testicles from small slits in the ball sacks, then tossing the fresh little packages to the dogs. Dogs love eating fresh testicles.... Then we would dip a stick, wrapped with a shop rag into used motor oil. The oil was then smeared on the open wounds to prevent infections, the process had to hurt..... I mean the testicles were removed without pain medication, and then I would bet the used motor oil burned like hell......
Castrations were a common event on the farm, but they in no way prepared me to see what suffered my little Hereford heifer. The calf was dead before nightfall, in part because maggots came boiling out of the rectum.....
Keep in mind I was just 5 years old, but I could tell something was scaring the old farmers like my dad. The vet came, as did the owners of the sale barn..... they talked openly in front of me explaining that we should probably put down our entire herd.... That is where the pushback came, no one wanted to be out the expense of killing every cow we owned.
That evening a deal was struck, the vet bagged the little calf, and said he would destroy the body. The sale barn owners would refund dad his expenses for the calf, and the following week I could pick out any animal at the sale to replace my loss.....
As a kid, I had no idea of what was going on....but looking back I now realize we were probably dealing with a screw worm infestation.... Our cows were "unofficially" quarantined for 6 months, and we kept them on the back lot so no one could see them from the road...... The vet stopped in every few days for a few weeks, dad was nervous as he inspected the cows.......
I understood to keep my mouth shut....though honestly I didn't really know what secrets we were keeping. But it was clear, no one could know..... If you have never seen an animal die because something was eating it's body from the inside out....I assure you it is quite the site... and though the site was nasty, it paled in comparison to the smell of rotten live flesh.....
I guess that was the first real secret I kept.....many more would follow through the years, but few covered a more distasteful topic......
