born 5/13/2012 photo taken at 24-hrs

The second beautiful baby to arrive at the goshala is our golden girl Gauri (her nakshatra name). She is mostly Jersey in breeding with a bit of Guernsey, which gives her the distinctive golden color in her hooves and skin. She was born into a somewhat gentler environment than Vrinda. Gauri was born on a biodynamic, organic dairy farm where babies are allowed to stay with their mothers for their first week, getting their meals directly from their mother, feeling their mother's loving touch. But only for the first week. After that, the male calves are sold to slaughter and female calves are either bottle fed and raised to become part of the dairy herd or, if not needed to replace an older cow, they are also sent to slaughter.

In early May, the people at the farm had told me that there was a cow named Magpie who was due to calve within the next couple of weeks and that they were not planning to keep this one (translation: this one would go to slaughter unless someone else wanted to raise the calf).

On Sunday, May 13th we were driving to New Jersey to visit my parents on Mother's Day. All day I was thinking about the cow named Magpie, I hadn't met her, but I was hoping that she would have a girl and have an easy birth. The next morning I got the call — Magpie had given birth to a little girl the day before! I rushed over to the farm to meet her, she was so sweet. She had a funny unique mannerism as a newborn, she would tap dance with her front feet, hopping back and forth from one foot to the other, trying to get used to her new body! I met Magpie too and told her that I wanted to raise her baby and that I'd take good care of her. But since we knew that this baby was in a safe place, she didn't come to live with us until she was nine days old, making our little golden girl the second to arrive at the goshala.