Dogie

On an outfit a wet cow is a cow with a suckling calf by her side, A dry cow is a cow that doesn’t have a calf this year. A barren cow does well in her production of beef but does not, has not, will not give birth to a calf.

A dogie is a motherless calf, a calf that has been unmothered by drought, disease, or distress and left to shift for himself. Most dogies, if they do not suffer the same misfortune that orphaned them, stay alive if they are lucky enough to get their mother’s first milk. This vital potion she made for him while she was making him, to give him resistance to the diseases that assault him in the first waking days of his warm, vulnerable life. After a Dogie has been of milk a few days, he loses his taste for it and goes on trying to make a living by grazing, as he is born with a set of teeth. Some dogies, however, learn to steal milk. They wait and when a mother is nursing her own calf, they slip in and steal a tit. The mother is bound to nurse her own calf and this obligation often keeps her from effectively fighting off a small, persistent, rogue of a dogie. Young cows in artificial surroundings have been known to drop a calf and never turn to look at him and walk right on without even knowing the smell of him, caring as little for their offspring as they would for their other droppings. These calves are orphaned so small that they lack the strength, the will, and the answers they need to stay alive. They are little fellows yearning for a father or a mother or a school, Cowboys hope to find them before something gets them, as yearning will keep them alive only a little while.