Don't Fight the Bottle

For the last six weeks, I have had the opportunity to work and the KSU Dairy Unit and I absolutely love it. Being outside, working with cows makes me feel alive in some strange way. I spend a lot of my time there taking care of the calves, which is more work than it seems. Each day you have to pick up their feed buckets, record how much they ate, determine what to feed them that day, wash their buckets and then put them back out to each calf. Twice a day we bottle feed them and every other day we put fresh hay in each of their individual hutches. 

A couple days ago I was working with one of the new born calves, trying to teach it how to drink from a bottle, when I realized that it is A LOT of work to make sure these small animals grow up healthy. It takes so much time devoted by workers and more patients than you think you have when that baby calf is pushing against you and fighting the bottle. This is kind of embarrassing, but that day I was incredibly frustrated and I started to yell at the calf. I said, “Quit fighting me! Don’t you know that you need this and it is going to help you!”

In that very instance I had a thought. In a way, we are all just baby calves. We all have workers that invest in us and devote so much of their time to us. Why? To make sure that we, the small animals, grow up “healthy.” So many times we fight the person that is trying to teach us or give us something we need. I don’t know why this is our immediate reaction, maybe it is just our nature. What I do know is if those calves didn’t get that milk every day, they wouldn’t be able to fully grow up into what they can be.

As we grow older we will always have someone investing in us. It may not be in the same way or at the same rate, but we will have someone. My challenge to you is next time you have a parent, advisor, friend, teacher, coach or mentor listen to you and give you advice, don’t immediately shut them down, but instead keep an open mind and thank them for all they do for you. Believe it or not, there are more people than you think out there that want to see you succeed. Be thankful that you have them and always think twice before you fight the bottle.