Two recent additions to the hooved population of the Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch have become fast friends after both escaped near-death experiences. Close in age at the time of their arrival, the two were placed together so neither would be isolated in their formative months.
The friendship would not be at all unusual were it not for one thing: one is a bison, and the other an Angus cow. Typically these animals do not have a chance to interact, much less become friends.
The bison calf’s story begins on Mother’s Day 2005, when his mother died. The rancher was faced with a hungry, needy two- or three-day-old baby and called friends to ask if they were interested in raising him. Surviving without a mother is difficult and requires a great deal of care. And, even if the rancher had the time needed to nurse the orphaned calf, the baby would have eventually faced the same fate as the others on the ranch: he would be sold for meat or for a hunt. The rancher was willing to give the abandoned infant a new lease on life—if someone else was willing to invest the time and energy.
Fortunately the De Carrasco family was up for the challenge and accepted the rancher’s offer. When Oksana De Carrasco, wife and mother of two, heard of the calf’s dilemma, she recalls, “We figured we would take care of him and decide what to do when he started to get bigger—if he made it.” She and her husband drove their minivan to pick up the baby bison. Oksana held him in the back seat with their nine- and six-year-old sons. Arriving home in Alpine, Texas, about 30 miles away, they first tried to put the calf in the kitchen. Realizing that he was bigger than he looked, they took apart their front gate and made a temporary pen. By then, he was becoming weak, and it took an hour or so to get him to take a bottle. The family named him “Becerito,” “baby cow” in Spanish.
The following day, Becerito was on his feet again, and the De Carrascos built a bigger pen and made him a straw bed. Oksana sought opinion from local veterinarians about the best formula to use for his milk and, after receiving a range of recommendations, settled on a combination of them. “We kept experimenting with the amounts and timing of his bottles,” she shares. “Within two or three days, he recognized us and called to us. We took him for daily walks. During the days, he would stay on the lawn in the front yard, and, as night fell, he would sleep in his pen in the back yard.” Astonishingly, the family lives in the downtown district on a busy street of Alpine, just a block from the train station.
One night when Becerito was around three months old, a pack of dogs attacked him in his pen, inflicting multiple wounds and biting off part of his bottom lip. Oksana washed him and applied medicine made for horse and cow injuries, and the family put up extra wire around the pen to prevent future attacks. The following weeks, she and her sons slept with him in his pen.
Becerito recovered well and learned how to turn on the water faucet in the front yard and open the kitchen door. As he grew, so did his appetite, and he would chase Oksana for his bottle, even knocking her down several times. After finishing a bottle, he would fall asleep with her sons on the lawn and put his head in Oksana’s lap. Becerito’s favorite place became the boys’ school room, and she often found him there, asleep with the cats.
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