Sara's Surprise, Part II (Saturday, Nov. 6)

Of course the weather had to take a sharp dip down to 32° since we have a tiny calf to worry about!  And Herb had to leave this morning for a wedding in MD with the barnyard fence still undone.  But before he left, we added several corral panels to join the round pen to the barn so that Sara could at least get the calf into part of the barn.  We bedded down an area inside the barn with straw in addition to the area we had already done in the round pen.  For some reason, she chose to stay outside with the calf, but she did move it off the grass and into the straw.  When I went out to feed this morning, there was frost everywhere except where Sara was laying with the calf, up against a straw windbreak.

When I sent Sara's previous owner the news about our little bull calf, she warned me that it's extremely hard to tell the difference between a bull and a heifer at that age unless you check between the back legs because all calves have a fold of umbilical skin that makes them look like little bulls.  It was obvious that Sara was NOT going to let us check anything on the calf, so I figured the second-best way to check would be to watch it pee.  So I stood there and watched it until it had to go . . .

. . . and that was how I found out that T-Bone is really SHE-Bone!  See for yourself:  Unless he's wired wrong, our little bull is really a little heifer!  And our first grass-fed beef just turned into our first grass-fed beef producer!

I'm delighted to realize we won't be eating Sara's baby--we'll be keeping her!  And it's a good thing because I also realize that a generic, gastronomic name like T-Bone is simply not enough to keep me from getting attached to such an adorable baby!