Have you ever read the children’s book called Are You My Mother?  It follows a baby bird who hatched from his egg while his mother was away from the nest. He ends up leaving the nest and searching for his “missing” mother amongst every other imaginable species (i.e. dog, cat, cow, equipment, etc.).

Here is my story of one species taking another species as their own!

When my husband and I initially made the big move out to Montana from Pennsylvania, I was very unsure of how Prairie, my rescue horse, would transition to life in the wide open spaces. One of the big things I was particularly curious about was what kind of opinion she would form of the bovine species. 🙂 Considering we were moving to a ranch where several hundred resided, I REALLY hoped that she would not be one of those horses who is terrified at the sight a cow.

Shortly after getting settled in our new home, we took a ride out to the pasture where the herd was to see how Prairie would react. Because of the cold wintry weather, the cows were all bunched up close together in one great, big black mass. Let’s just say my skittish horse found them to be a bit too intimidating for the likes of her.

While they stared curiously at her, her feet danced underneath me. Her movement had no intention of  taking me any closer to that fearsome black herd of bovine.  🙂  I felt as though I was on a catapult ready to shoot me back to the barn at any second. LOL

Needless to say, I knew she was only going to get more anxious and worked up if I made her stay in that vicinity, so for the day I turned her back. She had never been more eager to listen to my rein as that moment!

After her first introduction to the cows didn’t go so well (definitely not as well as I had hoped), I came up with a new  course of action. There was a handful of cows and calves being kept in the large corral across from our house. I decided to turn Prairie and Glory out with them and let Prairie find out for herself that cows aren’t so bad. Plus, Glory, my husband’s horse, is accustomed to cows and would be able to “show Prairie the ropes”.

As I watched from inside the house over the course of the next several hours, Prairie started learning that all a horse had to do was pin back her ears and the cows would move out of the way. It wasn’t long until she realized it was actually a fun game to play.

If those poor cows so much as took a step closer and looked at her while she was munching on the hay in the feeder, she would whirl around and lunge at them with her  ears flat and head snaked out. As the cows jumped to get out of her bubble, her ears would perk up and she’d stride back to her hay so proud of herself.

So Prairie’s fear of the bovine was dissolved! 🙂 BUT that’s not the end of the story.

About a week later, Prairie started showing a fascination with a particular calf in the corral. It was young, very young. Maybe a couple days old.

Much to the dismay of this little calf’s mother, her fascination grew into a full-fledged fetish. She would chase the momma cow off and then nuzzle and sniff her calf from nose to tail. When it wobbled and skittered around trying out it’s legs at faster speeds, she would be right behind it.

Pretty soon I noticed that the calf even seemed to have taken a liking for her! It would follow her around, stand by her side, look for milk to drink and try to play with her.

As cute as this was to watch, I knew we had a problem. Despite the fact that Prairie had once had a baby of her own and was currently convinced she was could adopt this one, she most definitely wasn’t going to be able to produce the milk it would need to survive.

That afternoon I went and relocated my motherly mare to a different location much to the relief of momma cow.

–Amanda

P.S. A little while later I was riding Glory through that corral and the calf came running up all playfully, ground to a halt, and looked up at us in bewilderment. Then realizing that Glory was not her adopted mother, Prairie, she went careening back to the side of her real momma.