We took this sick little girl to the veterinarian who withdrew syringes of pus from her joints. He told us there was no hope. She died in our arms and we buried her here at Pasado's.

Look for these veal crates (right) when you drive by dairy farms. In order to keep their muscle "tender", the calves are never allowed outside these tiny igloos so their muscles atrophy.  They are never allowed  to play, walk, or run in the pasture or socialize with other calves or cows. They never see their mothers again.

This is how Johnnie would have lived for 14 weeks, until he was slaughtered. The reason veal flesh is light-pink vs. red is because the calves are generally fed a milk substitute intentionally lacking in iron and other essential nutrients. This diet keeps the animals anemic and creates the pale pink or white color considered desirable in veal. 

UPDATE: This morning, as we prepared to greet the day, and a volunteer work party, we looked out our window and watched Johnnie, as he took his morning bottle. 

By nightfall, he would die.

He only lived a week and a half. His brief moments on this cruel earth were spent trying to fight off one bacteria or virus after another. Two days ago his temperature rose to 106 degrees. We intervened with medications and fluids – everything we could use, but it was nature that needed to help him, not now, but when he was born.

Like other “bull” calves, useless to a dairy farmer because they can’t become “replacement milkers”, he was never given his mom’s colostrom, the vital, precious "first milk" all mammals give; full of antibodies that God provides a mother in the first hours to give to her new life. The dairy farmers rip these babies from their mothers – and they don’t even allow a drop of this precious milk to be given to them.

Johnnie’s temperature had come down this week, but then today, he started to decline. He fought so hard, but his gums became pale pink, he couldn’t stand, and he wouldn’t drink his midday meal. He was going “septic” and into shock.

We rushed him to our veterinarian. Placed on IV fluids and antibiotics, we waited for the results of the blood tests: “This calf never got colostrom,” she determined. “The cells that fight off infection aren’t even functioning.”

We knew, from rescuing dairy calves before, that using the “whole” blood from a dairy cow, a blood transfusion could help. “Do it,” we told the vet. “Just do it, now.”

The vet performed the blood transfusion and we hoped for the best. Within two hours, Johnnie was dead.

Trying to remain professional, and keep from bursting into tears, we asked “WHY don’t these farmers just allow these creatures to have even an HOUR’s worth of their mother’s milk?” almost pleading with her. We wanted to know, from someone who is there, on the farms, in the maternity “pits” they call them, who see them when they take their first breath, to tell us WHY.

“The bulls aren’t worth anything to them. They take their colostrom, pasteurize it, and then freeze it for when a girl is born. The girls are valuable as replacement milkers. The boys aren’t.”

It was as simple as that. Money.

And it just kept getting worse: “Also, there are so many diseases,” she went on to say, “so many diseases that the mom can pass on to the calf. That’s why they pasteurize the colostrom first before it’s used.” Unbelievable. And people DRINK this stuff? So many diseases that they have to heat it to kill all the bacteria? If people only knew.

And what could we do for the next dairy calf, discarded at birth, who we rescue? “There is nothing. They have already picked up everything they could – every disease when they’re born and they’re not allowed to suckle. Their little noses lay in the manure in the maternity pit, and they pick up everything.”

“Their little noses lay in the manure in the maternity pit...".

Johnnie is at peace now. Sharing eternity with the millions of dairy calves thrown away like garbage, because people choose to drink milk and eat dairy products.

We are not in pain for him - nor do we feel disdain for the farmers. It is those who make a conscious decision, to buy milk and the products made from milk, who we feel shame for. Especially when they know what suffering they cause through their choices.