I am waiting on my last two cows to calve, and I would be lying if I told you that I am not looking forward to a full night of sleep. It has all caught up to me and I am in need of some quality shuteye.
Today was a busy day. I am officially back to work now, but had most of today off with lieu time and to be home for the vet students that were here to do some work. Firstly, we had to get 10 calves in to be blood tested for the study we are involved in.
You would think that with these calves being less than a month old that it shouldn’t be too hard, but my Apple Watch kept asking me if I had started a workout. It was, but maybe not the same type of workout the watch was referring to.
We got in 11 calves in total, plus the calf that I hadn’t been able to castrate. The cows thought I was weaning the calves, so it sounded pretty exciting at my place for a bit. We ended up bringing the calves right into the barn to do the work because it wasn’t a nice spring day like we had the week before.
The two vet students got to work and blood tested the 10 calves in the study. We had to lay them out on their sides so they could access their necks—another good workout. This time, with all the kicking and wrangling, my Apple Watch thought I had fallen and was getting ready to call my emergency contacts.
Luckily, my first contact is my mom, who was helping us. We let those calves back out to their own moms and our next task was our little one-nutter. Though we could get ahold of the second testicle, we couldn’t get it down far enough to get the elastic on it so the girls decided to do a little surgery.
As they were getting set up, I put down some extra straw so they had a decent place to work. They gave him his sedative and in little time he passed out. We adjusted him to have the best light and the girls went at blocking him and then removing the testicles.
They both got a turn and after a few stitches and an antibiotic I went and got him his momma, and they are getting another night inside. It wasn’t too long until he was up and nursing. He will heal up quickly and be back out with the rest in no time. Since it is so cold it seemed only fair to keep him in for a bit. So hopefully the girls (vet students) have some other fun things to experience this week.
The Rainy River Soil and Crop Improvement Association is hosting its annual general meeting Monday, March 23 beginning at 4:30 p.m. at the Emo Legion. Supper will be served at 6:00 p.m. They have the OSCIA President attending, Andy Van Niekerk, agronomist Jim McComb, updates on the Canada Food Grains Project, International Watershed Coordinator Megan Mills, and I will give an update on OCRC- Emo. Please RSVP with rrsoilandcrop@gmail.com or 807-707-3717!
