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“They do. Even young ones like this. It just makes them hopefully want to eat as much as they can, and as I suspected, she definitely needs as many calories as we can pump into her.”
Within a couple of minutes, Mabel had the little filly’s nose in the bucket, and she was slurping the milk down.
“She drank it all,” he said, surprised.
“Yeah. I wasn’t expecting that either. But I just made a quarter of a bottle. It’s better to give them lots of small meals than it is to give them a couple of big ones. So, every two hours we’re going to need to give her that much, and once she’s done that for twenty-four hours, or maybe even thirty-six, we’ll bump it up.”
“Through the night?” he asked, thinking that someone was going to have to get up every two hours.
“Yeah. Raising babies is not for the faint of heart.”
“Or for people who like to sleep apparently,” he couldn’t keep from saying.
She gave him a weary smile. “That too. For a while anyway.”
“How long?”
“For the first couple of weeks, and it should be every two hours around the clock. Then, you can probably back it off to every three or four hours at night, but I’d keep it every two or three hours during the day. Especially if she’s not thriving. If she’s thriving, that’s a different story, and you might be able to bump up the meals and do it less often. Still, if you want the very best outcome, frequent smaller meals is the best.”
“And then?” he asked, still trying to figure out whether they were going to be doing this for years, or for a couple of weeks, or till Christmas.
“By the time she’s a month old, you could probably be doing it every six hours and longer overnight. But,” she smiled at him, “if she can get up on her own, you can leave some milk out overnight, so even when she’s two or three weeks, she can go to her bucket and feed herself. That would be the key.”
“I see.”
“Still, the absolute best thing to do would be to feed her fresh milk mixed up every two to three hours.”
“Spoken like a vet.”
“Right? In a couple of days, if she’s still with us, and we’re getting up every two hours, I think we’ll all be more than willing to back it off a little and just give her some milk that she can eat herself in a bucket.”
He laughed, but he caught her words,if she’s still with us. “Do you think she’s gonna make it?”
Mabel’s smile faded slowly from her face as she looked at the little filly, who had taken two steps and then lain down. She flopped more than lay, since her legs seemed to be too weak to lower herself gently to the ground.
“I don’t know. Babies are touchy, and when they go down, it’s awfully hard to get them back up. And they fade fast.”
He nodded, still not entirely sure of what exactly she thought, but understanding that it would be touch and go, and she probably couldn’t say for sure whether the filly had a good shot or not.
“Well, we talked yesterday about getting some animals. Here’s our first one.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe someone just dropped her off. Do you think they’ll be back for her?”
“You know, people do this at farms, all the time. I’ll have farmers bringing an animal in to me and say someone just dropped it off in the driveway, and sometimes they take care of it, paying for it, and sometimes they want me to take it in.”
“We can’t take every animal that you’re given.”
“No. Farmers really can’t either. It’s not fair. But you do what you can. And you never turn humans away.”
She smiled, looking up in his eyes, and he understood that. And appreciated it. That she differentiated between the idea that humans were different from animals. Humans were made in the image of God, with an eternal spirit.
Animals were part of the created world that man was given dominion over.
There was a clear differentiation in God’s Word and in God’s eyes.
Speaking of humans, he remembered about the girls and checked his watch. “Our girls should be here any minute.”
“Wow. The morning is flying by,” Mabel said, bending down and giving the filly one last pat on the head. “Maybe, the first thing they can do once they get here is name our new baby. Kind of funny that everybody’s arriving on the same day.”
“Sure is. But I guess that makes it more special,” James said, looking at the filly once more, wondering who would just drop her off. But he supposed if they didn’t have the resources to care for her or possibly the money to pay for her care, they did the best thing they could.
