It is a hard wait for babies...
Oct 18, 2014 12:05:31 GMT -5
midhilldexters, Fran, and 1 more like this
Post by Olga on Oct 18, 2014 12:05:31 GMT -5
... when everybody is posting beautiful pictures of newborn calves! Mine aren't due for a while, so sometimes one starts to wonder, "Are they even pregnant?" But then one day you start noticing that your first time heifer is growing an udder and you wipe the proverbial sweat off your brow. "Phew, thank goodness!" you say and you don't worry about that one - at least not until right at calving time. Chances are she'll deliver just fine on her own and become a good mama just like her mama did.
But then there is that older cow, in my case Claire. Claire arrived here in a rougher condition than I would like to see. She had just finished raising a calf and despite my best efforts was quickly drying up. She ended up turned out with the rest of the cows and the bull, from sometime in beginning of February. The bull was gone to the butcher in June. In those four months I didn't observe much interaction between Claire and the bull, which I attributed to an early breeding that I didn't witness.... but there are always those nagging doubts. Also, Claire has gotten to be really fat, fatter than any of my cows ever. So naturally I had doubts if she was pregnant or just fat. But not after today. I was standing next to the cows, Jasmine was trying to eat my right hand off, Java was feeling frisky and getting on Maxwell's nerves, so to speak, Ding-A-Ling was standing off by herself, as she does more and more often now, and Claire was looking at me and chewing cud. Except there were these large bulges in her right side. For a second it looked like a cow version of the Alien movie! Claire even kicked at it... The bulges were sometimes one, sometimes two.
So phew, I can now rest in peace. We will have some new babies in December - January!
But then there is that older cow, in my case Claire. Claire arrived here in a rougher condition than I would like to see. She had just finished raising a calf and despite my best efforts was quickly drying up. She ended up turned out with the rest of the cows and the bull, from sometime in beginning of February. The bull was gone to the butcher in June. In those four months I didn't observe much interaction between Claire and the bull, which I attributed to an early breeding that I didn't witness.... but there are always those nagging doubts. Also, Claire has gotten to be really fat, fatter than any of my cows ever. So naturally I had doubts if she was pregnant or just fat. But not after today. I was standing next to the cows, Jasmine was trying to eat my right hand off, Java was feeling frisky and getting on Maxwell's nerves, so to speak, Ding-A-Ling was standing off by herself, as she does more and more often now, and Claire was looking at me and chewing cud. Except there were these large bulges in her right side. For a second it looked like a cow version of the Alien movie! Claire even kicked at it... The bulges were sometimes one, sometimes two.
So phew, I can now rest in peace. We will have some new babies in December - January!
I've never seen the alien on my girls at all - that would be soooo cool. And I can't really tell just by looking because a few of them just stay fat, no matter what! My last calf for this year was born early Sunday morning, a little bull calf that will be steered. My next ones shouldn't be due until Jan/Feb/Mar.
Of course the down side is that I have over 300 large round bales in the barn for our winter feeding and it's darn near another full time job for Sheril and I. We are having a break in the action, I don't think we've had any new calves for 3 weeks now.