I agree, this is a fabulous idea, but calving season here is February through April. Unless I have a calf shipped in from somewhere (MM, maybe you could find one and bring it up here in your truck? and I'm only half joking!), the youngest calves available are 5 to 6 month old weaned calves. I would LOVE to keep her going with another calf, and I think she has the motherly personality to take a foster with no problems, but there are no young calves in the area right now.
I did this exact thing when I had my previous cow, Cricket, but she had her calves in the fall, so in the spring, when all the beefers were calving, I was weaning her calf. I took an orphaned calf one year when one of the neighbor's cows had a set of twins and abandoned one of them. He asked if he could buy milk to bottle feed, and I said why not just bring him over and let him nurse the cow directly? So he did, and Cricket loved him and mothered him and raised him to 6 months, when he went back to the neighbor. Another time, Cricket's dam went down with a DA (I think) and we don't have a vet that will come out, so we had to put her down. Her calf was only 3 days old, and I had JUST weaned Cricket's one and only spring calf (I hate spring calves), so she was missing her baby, and she took her little sister like she was her own baby and I had a fat heifer calf to trade for hay the following summer. I have no problem doing that, and I have NO problem calf-sharing, but there's a scarcity of baby calves in the fall, that's all.
Once in a while, one of our neighbors will buy a group of young Jersey heifers for their girls to raise and sell. I might see if they're planning on getting any, although, even if they are, will the calf be the right COLOR for Molly? The last time I tried to graft a calf on Cricket, it was a Jersey heifer calf that was already 3 months old, and Cricket had lost her calf a month prior, so she wasn't interested in mothering this alien baby. (And it was just a month before we lost her to prolapse, so it turned out well that she refused the calf.) But I wonder if that would happen with Molly, too. I'm pretty sure she'd take a black calf, but that was weird with Cricket and fawn colored calf. Maybe it was just a fluke? Anyway, IF they're getting some calves, it's possible I could borrow one for the winter and use it as my backup milker, then give it back in the spring.
I think Molly is going to be at least as good, maybe better, as Cricket was as a foster mother, judging by how she dotes on her baby, and he's her first! Sometimes (at least in my experience) heifers can be a bit confused by their first calf, but Molly was in love with Joe at first sight, and was a totally perfect mother, right out of the gate.
The absolute worst that can happen is I have to dry Molly up when she gets back from the bull (if Joe weans himself, I mean), or if he gets bullish enough that he starts being destructive. MORE destructive than "normal cow destructive," I mean, LOL! (I still haven't called that next-to-useless vet to see how much a surgical castration would be...). Anyway, I'd have to buy milk from the neighbor until Molly had her next calf, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. It wouldn't be my FIRST choice of options, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.
Sorry, I went on and on there. Wrote another damn book... I'm just thinking out loud. Sometimes when I write stuff down, I get an idea I hadn't thought of before.
