By DOUG GRAVES
Ohio Correspondent

MIAMISBURG, Ohio — Bill Whitaker is very keen in knowing when something’s awry on his farm on Soldier’s Home Road in Miamisburg. So when one of his newborn calves was abandoned from its mother earlier this month he had to act quickly.

“It’s important that a calf gets that mother’s milk because the milk regulates the calf’s digestive system,” Whitaker said.

Whitaker eventually found the heifer among the 50 which gave birth, but the animal wanted nothing to do with its offspring.

I spotted the after birth hanging from the heifer so we put the heifer in a head holder and tried to get the baby calf to nurse, but the heifer put up a fit, Whitaker said.

According to a local veterinarian, the heifer associated the painful delivery with the newborn calf and wanted no part of the newborn. After two weeks of force-feeding, the heifer was sold.

“No point in keeping her around because it might happen again and she’d not accept the next calf,” Whitaker said.

With no solution to the problem Whitaker put the three-month old calf in a pen with Angel, a six-year old spotted mare.

What happened next startled even Whitaker, who thought he had seen everything there was to see on a farm.

“Just as soon as we put this calf into the pen with the horse the mare approached the calf and began licking it on its back,” Whitaker said. “The horse warmed up to the calf and simply adopted it. The calf is surviving because of the horse.”

Normally horses and calves don’t get along well because horses like to run and cows like to walk, and when horses run that startles cows.

Most urbanites don’t spot this rarity, but fellow farmers have parked along side the Whitaker farm and gawked for hours.

“Everyone I’ve spoken with has never seen anything like it,” said Whitaker, who shares the duties of watching the unusual pen pals with his granddaughter, Ally. “You hear of horses mothering other horses, but nothing like this. Angel has never had a foal and sometimes horses will have a false pregnancy. This whole thing is mind-boggling.”

Ally named the calf Midnight.

“We named her that because angels appear in the night,” Ally said.

In addition to tending to this rare couple the Whitakers raise beef cattle, Boer goats, chickens, pheasants, peacocks, guineas and hay.

This farm news was published in the July 18, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.