Coffee came to us after her mother died from a prolapsed uterus shortly after she was born. The cows, beautiful Brahmans, belonged to the farmer who was leasing our farm. He didn't have the time to look after her, so asked if we wanted her. This was the first time I considered saying "no" because I had spent so much time in the past 12 months scrubbing bottles, mixing milk formula and feeding babies, and had envisioned a break from parenting duties. It was not to be! When the farmer bought her to us in the back of his car and we saw her little deformed mouth and nose and heard her snuffling, we couldn't abandon her. Her sad, weeping eyes made it look like she was crying, and, of course, we instantly fell in love with her and wanted to protect her from the cold and lonely world. So now we had our first cow, and a new learning curve commenced.
