Bottle Calf Cash

This weekend I told ya’ll about my latest bottle calf and asked for a vote of your favorite name. Looks like his name will be Cash (The Man in Black). Thank ya’ll for the over 100 votes and I have to give credit to the “other” names that were submitted (Lucky, T-bone, Sue, Oscar, and Charlie).

I have raised many calves in my days on the ranch. As a kid, my dad used to bring home all the orphan calves from our cowherd. Most of the time I would raise them up and sell at 400 – 500 pounds. There were even a few heifers I kept for cows, one of which I still have, though she is nearing her end. I remember many, many days getting up extra early, mixing up to 3 bottles and feeding calves before I jumped on the bus for school. Not gonna lie, sometimes dad had to coax me out of bed on those cold and wet mornings.

Some might ask What do you feed a baby calf? If the mother cow is still around, she would be milked and the calf fed from a bottle, but then we would not have an orphan calf. It is easiest to have a nurse cow, usually an older dairy cow still giving plenty of milk to raise two, sometimes three, calves at once. When there is no nurse cow around we have milk replacer. Kinda like formula for a child, only in bigger quantities and formulated for a calf’s needs. Ya’ll should check with Jim Fisher (Twitter, Web, Blog), he has a whole ton of info on caring for baby calves.Since Cash (The Man in Black) now has his name, I thought it only appropriate to share some fun facts about the Johnny Cash and his Arkansas roots.

• Born in Kingsland, Arkansas and raised in Dyess, Arkansas
• His name given at birth was J.R. Cash. He adopted John when he enlisted in the Air Force
• His family raised cotton and the hard times from floods and the Depression are said to have inspired the feeling behind much of his song writing
• Most notably a Country singer, Cash also sang rockabilly, rock and roll, blues, folk, and gospel
• Early in his career he recorded with Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee with the likes of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis
• Cash died less than four months after the death of his wife, June Carter Cash, in 2003