the first one

In case you didn't already know.....I live on a farm.  Mostly beef cattle, but some chickens and turkeys in the summer time....and a few years ago there were pigs, too.  One of my favourite activities at this time of year is monitoring the calf activity.  Once they start arriving, every morning I am scouring the pen looking for new arrivals almost as soon as I wake up in the morning, trying to spot and count to see if there were any overnight deliveries.  Later, when I'm driving to work, it takes me about five times longer to get to the end of the driveway - I'm driving so slowly while watching the antics.

Yes, there has been some heartbreak over the years - I think there always is whenever animals are concerned....but luckily I am pretty removed from most of that -- and far, far away from all of the associated work of farm life. 

I'm not sure how other small cattle operations work, but here, each calendar year is represented by a letter of the alphabet (this year = Z, 2011 was Y, etc.), and the calves are numbered in birth order.  So this little one, 1Z is the first born for this year.....

 I just snapped this quickly on my way home from work tonight.  I think s/he was actually born on Monday night or early Tuesday morning - still very new, and oh, so very clean and white.