Angel Baby

BY AYESHA JOY CLIFFORD ©

I FIRST met Angel when she appeared under the microscope slide glass as an embryo barely a week old having just been flushed from our lovely stud cow Uptown Girl.

We were staring intently at two little lives under glass in The Old Farm Dairy and the vet declared that we might as well implant both of them as "they wouldn't grow on the ground".

Defying the odds, Angel and Bella were born to their surrogate cow mum and Angel being the weaker and smaller of the two at birth, became my first fully hand-raised poddy heifer.

I've always loved nurturing animals and people and I would dash up to visit Angel and sit on the hay and stroke her ears, sing to her and just spend time with her. I wondered whether she would ever make a cow mother herself because she was raised with humans.

Would she be a good mother? 

She joined the herd and nature and nurture have triumphed as she has just welcomed her own second heifer which we named Angel Baby.

She is an adorable, pink-nosed bundle of Charolais fur entertaining us with her leaps and bounds as she finds her feet in the world and her place in the herd.

One of the best things about farm life is the everyday connection to the seasons and cycles of life. 

Small moments make me stop every day and appreciate my life right here, right now.

Thanks little Angel Baby!