Most days it is hard to believe that nearly four years have passed since I made the decision to uproot and move nearly halfway across the country. While it's a decision I have yet to regret, leaving behind my family, friends and farm was one of the hardest things I had done up to that point.
As a soon to be college graduate, I relished those last few classes and months of "life on the hill" at Cornell. The full breadth of the distance I was about to put between my family and cows didn't really hit me until we began packing 21-years worth of memories into a U-Haul box.
In a few short months, my fourth year in Wisconsin will come to a close. And while I get back home three to four times each year, it has a different feeling than it did when I interacted with my family's herd on a more regular basis.
After attending Dairy Challenge in New York last week, I swung home for a quick visit. And while that in and of itself was worth the short detour, this past weekend, I finally had the opportunity to bring my own small piece of the Empire State to Wisconsin.
This Jersey calf, Moonshadow Hills Sangria, may not have a spectacular pedigree, but her lineage, in the eyes of my father and I, holds
a good deal of sentimental value.
Sangria's granddam, Snickers, wasn't expected to live very long after contracting
an E. coli infection early in life. I skipped dairy bowl practice that night 12 years ago and waited for the vet to arrive. His diagnosis was grim, but he did all he could to give a 14-year-old girl hope.
Once the vet placed a catheter into the calf's vein and left behind a few bags of fluids to get us through the night, Snickers' life was in our hands.
To me, it seemed the natural next step was to bring the calf to the house that night and let her reside in our bathroom. With a bit of convincing, my parents were on the same page. For my father, it seemed like the least we could do for a calf that was unlikely to make it through the night.
During dinner that evening, we devised a color-coded care schedule and my alarm was set for 3 a.m., when she'd need her next IV. After nearly a week in the bathroom, Snickers was relocated to the basement and a month later joined the rest of her future herdmates outside. She called my family's dairy home until she left the herd in March.
Early on, Snickers was a calf that sparked my love of the dairy industry. Therefore, it seemed only fitting that it was one of her decedents that joined me on my most recent trek to the Badger State.
The author , Amanda Smith, was an associate editor and is an animal science graduate of Cornell University. Smith covers feeding, milk quality and heads up the World Dairy Expo Supplement. She grew up on a Medina, N.Y., dairy, and interned at a 1,700-cow western New York dairy, a large New York calf and heifer farm, and studied in New Zealand for one semester.
As a soon to be college graduate, I relished those last few classes and months of "life on the hill" at Cornell. The full breadth of the distance I was about to put between my family and cows didn't really hit me until we began packing 21-years worth of memories into a U-Haul box.
In a few short months, my fourth year in Wisconsin will come to a close. And while I get back home three to four times each year, it has a different feeling than it did when I interacted with my family's herd on a more regular basis.
After attending Dairy Challenge in New York last week, I swung home for a quick visit. And while that in and of itself was worth the short detour, this past weekend, I finally had the opportunity to bring my own small piece of the Empire State to Wisconsin.
This Jersey calf, Moonshadow Hills Sangria, may not have a spectacular pedigree, but her lineage, in the eyes of my father and I, holds a good deal of sentimental value.
Sangria's granddam, Snickers, wasn't expected to live very long after contracting
an E. coli infection early in life. I skipped dairy bowl practice that night 12 years ago and waited for the vet to arrive. His diagnosis was grim, but he did all he could to give a 14-year-old girl hope.
Once the vet placed a catheter into the calf's vein and left behind a few bags of fluids to get us through the night, Snickers' life was in our hands.
To me, it seemed the natural next step was to bring the calf to the house that night and let her reside in our bathroom. With a bit of convincing, my parents were on the same page. For my father, it seemed like the least we could do for a calf that was unlikely to make it through the night.
During dinner that evening, we devised a color-coded care schedule and my alarm was set for 3 a.m., when she'd need her next IV. After nearly a week in the bathroom, Snickers was relocated to the basement and a month later joined the rest of her future herdmates outside. She called my family's dairy home until she left the herd in March.
Early on, Snickers was a calf that sparked my love of the dairy industry. Therefore, it seemed only fitting that it was one of her decedents that joined me on my most recent trek to the Badger State.
The author , Amanda Smith, was an associate editor and is an animal science graduate of Cornell University. Smith covers feeding, milk quality and heads up the World Dairy Expo Supplement. She grew up on a Medina, N.Y., dairy, and interned at a 1,700-cow western New York dairy, a large New York calf and heifer farm, and studied in New Zealand for one semester.
