Most beef cattle ranches don’t keep steers for pets, but Willybob is one of a kind. Willybob the steer is a survivor and gets to live out his life as a pet rather than being sold for beef.
Willybob has a unique story. He was born in early June to an older Hereford cow who was having some health issues. We hauled our cow/calf pairs out to summer pasture around June 15th. We noticed that this cow needed to be doctored, so we left her and her calf back in the home pasture so we could doctor her easily. We gave her a couple rounds of antibiotics but nothing helped, her time was up and she died a few days later.
When we went back down to get her calf later that day, he was nowhere to be found. For a week, we went through the little pasture morning and night looking for him but never saw him. At this point, the calf was no more than two weeks old – without a mother, we figured that the coyotes had probably gotten him.
Fast forward to early August – I was riding horseback through the pasture and I saw this baby calf hiding in a little patch of alfalfa. I had ridden through that pasture a few times a week all summer long and had never come across the calf.
He was in pretty tough shape. He was down by a little creek that runs through the pasture so he had access to water and grass. There were no other cow/calf pairs in the pasture for him to steal any milk from and to this day we aren’t sure how he made it almost two months completely on his own.
We went down to the pasture and roped him so we could bring him up to the house. He lived in a 12’x12′ dog kennel for a couple of days while I tamed him down and got him started on calf starter pellets. We decided since he hadn’t had any milk after two weeks of age that we would just continue on with pellets instead of milk replacer and see how he did.
We named him Willybob and he quickly became a pet. Throughout the rest of the summer and fall, he lived on the lawn. I moved him to a fresh patch of grass each day and kept free choice pellets in front of him. He started to fill out and thrive.
We purchased a weanling filly that fall and before winter came, Willybob moved in with Swift. He and Swift became fast friends. I built a special little pen in the barn the first winter for Willybob’s pellets so he could continue to have free choice access while living with a horse. I just put a bar across the gate opening at back height that Willybob could walk under but Swift was too tall to get underneath.
He has lived with our horses ever since. The next summer, he got out of the horse pasture and in with our heifers one afternoon. By 8 pm, he had come back to the fence line and was bellowing to be let back in with his horses.
Willybob went to my family’s branding the spring of his two year old year just for fun. He was a hit! He’s still best friends with his pal Swift and enjoys lots of treats. He will be four this summer and he is now huge!
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