Mom of the Year

Our Bison Mary, Number 1, has earned the Mom of the Year award!  Or she should anyway :).  One of our bison moms, Laura, #4, died suddenly a few months ago.  Her calf was just a few weeks old.  We didn't know how to help the calf so we just watched and waited.  

Unfortunately, we were waiting for it to die.  It was too young to survive on just grass and hay, but we weren't going to separate it on it's own to bottle feed it.  Not living on the ranch made this just too difficult for us to manage.  Well, the calf kept living.  We saw it try to nurse on Mary, right after it's mom had died, but Mary kicked it away.  It was super close in age to Mary's calf and it would hang out with her calf.  Looks like she wore Mary down and Mary finally adopted her.  Mary is feeding both calves.  Way to go Mary!  Both calves will suffer a bit on growth, but at least we didn't lose the calf too!  Seriously Mary is such a good mom!