We're All A Little Different

 

Maybe it's a face only a mother could love. But that face - and, in reality, the whole body - certainly peaked the curiosity of long-time beef cattle producers.

A hairless baby calf was born to a mama in the local maternity ward. Randy and I have been around cattle our entire lives, and it's a first for us. My dad - who will be 90 in April - hasn't ever seen one. Other long-time beef producers were similarly flummoxed. 

However, in some ways, it reminded us of the 6-legged calf we had several years ago. (See that blog post HERE.) 

File photo from our cattle herd in 2018. That calf survived and seemed unaffected by its extra appendages.

Just as there are in human births, there are sometimes anomalies in reproductive genetics.

I didn't find a lot about the condition when I "searched it up," as Brooke would say.  According to Dr. Google, it's called congenital hypotrichosis. Hairlessness occurs in several breeds of beef cattle. It expresses itself as complete or partial loss of hair. Calves are often born with no hair but will grow a short curly coat of hair with age. 

Affected calves are prone to environmental stress (cold, wet, sunburn) and skin infections are more prevalent. A recessive gene causes hairlessness. (Information from the National Library of Science.) The veterinarian that the owners consulted had only seen one hairless calf in his long-time practice, and that had involved a baby dairy calf. 

The first time we visited, the calf was lying near a shelter belt wind break, with its mama nearby. But when we got a little too close to suit them, the baby got up from its nap. Except for its unusual appearance, it moved around like its fellow pasture mates.

However, the next time we visited was during the seasonal temperature swing that swept through Kansas last week. They had put the little calf in a shed to try and keep it a little warmer. 

When we visited, it didn't seem to have a lot of energy.We later learned that the baby didn't make it. From my internet search, the affected calves may have other anomalies that can't readily be seen, so it's hard to say why it didn't make it.

As I've written before, we'd all like the stories on the farm to be like fairytales. Who wouldn't want green pastures, frolicking baby calves, rain when it's needed and sunshine in good measure? But life isn't like that - whether on the farm or in the city. 

A friend who writes a column for Farm Bureau just wrote about that, too. She said:

My heart will always hurt when we lose a calf, but death is an inevitable part of owning livestock. A lifetime experience on the farm helped me build the strength to weather the cycle of life and death that is a truth of this life. Farm life is full of hard thing — hard lessons, hard truths, hard work. Confidence and competence to face challenges in life by doing what is difficult and surviving.

Jackie Mundt from her Kansas Farm Bureau Insight column dated March 4, 2024

Maybe those hard lessons should help us see the miracles all around us ... and make us even more grateful for every one of them.