Christmas tidings come in all shapes and sizes. In 2009 at
Animal Place, Christmas Day brought a frightened, underfed baby
calf with a pair of the biggest brown eyes imaginable. Berkeley
Animal Control retrieved the week-old male Jersey calf from a
back yard in the city of Berkeley on Christmas Day. With neither
the facilities nor the knowledge to care for him, the Berkeley
Shelter called upon us to help, and within two hours, the little
calf was on his way to Animal Place. We quickly got together the
milk bottles, nipples, calf-replacer milk, blankets, antibiotics
and other things we'd need to care for him. Nicholas, as we've
named him, was apparently bought at auction and was likely
destined for backyard slaughter, which is fairly common. One
factor making such slaughter common is that male calves like
Nicholas are of little use to dairy farmers. As the country's
leading dairy state, California is home to 1.5 million milk
cows, each of whom must be impregnated to give milk. Although
nature intends this milk