Stupid or Plain Bad Luck?

A couple weeks ago my dad shipped some cows and all the calves to the auction market.  He borrowed the neighbors stock trailer and made two trips.  The first trip delivered the cows to auction about thirty minutes away.  The second trip involved having a vehicle on the highway force him to a stop.  The vehicle could see a leg sticking out from under the stock trailer.  

Upon his arrival home he unloads the poor calf, gives it a shot of Alamycin (long lasting penicillin) and leaves it.  This is a Tuesday.  In exactly seven days he had a trip scheduled for Germany.  Five days pass and he continued kinda sorta doctoring the calf who spent the majority of his time lying down (Really do you blame it?).  At about day five he starts giving me instructions about the calf.  I look at him wild eyed when he tells me "It's not that bad." and tell him that cows are like horses - there's actually stuff inside their hooves.  

Once he leaves, my mom and I make our own plan of action.  We lock the momma cow in with the calf (dad had been letting her in twice a day to feed him) and start feeding her my horse square bales.  The next thing we do is I call my farrier and she calls the vet.  The farrier tells me what should happen if the calf is salvageable (we were prepared to put a bullet in him to end his suffering if need be) and the vet reinforces what the farrier says.  The vet bandages the calf and we move him out of the open corral into a panelled shed.  The goal is to keep the calf dry and clean.  Not so easy when we are getting snow and are not set up properly.

Momma cow is bug eyed and snuffy making her a treat to work around so with the help of my brother's two friends we moved implements and set up a panel runway to the automatic waterer.  This way we don't have to haul water for her, instead let her out twice a day.  

The vet comes tomorrow morning to see how the poor little fellow is doing.  I'm happy to report he's starting to stand a bit more and is starting to eat his grain and some hay.  Needless to say I was a wee bit aggravated with my father leaving me to deal with his problems.  The irony is the stock trailer he borrowed had had the floor boards replaced a few years ago.