"Where's The Beef?"

When my brothers and I grew up in Florida we didn't have a lot of extra money to waste. In fact, our dad would go to the dairy in Tampa to get each of the older children a male calf every spring. The dairy gave them away to anyone who would take one because they didn't have much use for male calves, which is understandable. We children would raise them and later sell them to be butchered for beef when we had them at a good wieght. That was how we got money for our school clothes each fall.

We lived in the country bye that time some forty miles inland from Tampa. Dad would borrow and old pickup truck from our neighbor and he and my two older brothers would make the trip each year to get our calves. I never got to go and pick out my own calf like the boys, I could never understand that. Mom would always tell me it was too dangerous since they, literally, had to chase the calves down and herd them into the old pickup. Because of this situation I would always get the ugliest, sickest looking, puniest calf available, my brothers would go out of their way to see to it.

These calves had to be fed with a bucket of formula with a nipple attached because they hadn't been weaned yet. We had to get up early enough each morning to mix the formula, feed the calves, hose down the cement floor of the barn and put out fresh hay across it. I have to tell you, shoveling up what comes naturally to a young bull, spraying and putting down fresh hay is not the most glamorous job a girl could want . I never minded the formula mixing and feeding too much but I hated when it was my turn to clean up the mess.

Occasionally the calves would have to be dipped in sheep dip. To those of you who don't know what this pleasant experience is like I will try to explain. The vat was a concrete pit that had a ramp at each end so the cattle could go down one ramp, pass through the dip then up the other ramp into the pasture. You would fill the pit with sheep dip to a level that was equal to the neck of the calf. Now, sometimes they were more than willing to escape the pit, other times you'd have to tie a noose to their neck and try to pull them out.

As usual, my calf was the runt of the bunch. The boys really went out of their way this year to find me a real looser. My brothers would laugh at me because I always named my calf, that particular year the calf's name was Archie.

I took care of Archie as if he was my one and only child. I tried things with that calf I never tried in the past but something was wrong...Archie would not grow. My brother's calves were getting big and their horns were coming out nicely. Archie didn't have any signs of where his horns were supposed to be...not even the little knot that comes up first before the horns break through the skin. Occasionally Dad would come out to the barn and check him out. I believe he thought I wasn't feeding the calf correctly but he couldn't understand what was going on either and Archie soon became the talk of the town.

It seemed at least once a week there was another neighbor, old farmer, ex-rancher, you name it... who had come to look at the calf and give his opinion of what Archie's problem was. The opinions ranged anywhere from not having enough minerals in his formula to being born during a full moon. Yes, that was being born during a full moon. It seemed a lot of the country folk relied on the moon for every thing they attempted. Anything from planting potatoes to buying new tractors but nobody seemed to be able to help Archie.

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