Well I made it into the Station part days last week. I have a hard time weaning myself off from watching cows all day long! One morning I was interrupted by a couple of calving cows. Earlier last week I had an older cow in the barn and I noticed that she was bleeding from vagina quite significantly. She hadn’t calved yet so this concerned me. I reached out to my vet cousin who upon seeing the video that I took of this, came for a quick visit. She was concerned we were dealing with a uterine torsion. Upon examination she didn’t find that. The cow wasn’t dilated much either which meant she wasn’t calving at the moment. We were both confused so she suggested I just keep an eye on her and cross our fingers she was calving soon. I did just that and because she showed no action my vet cousin came a few more times to make sure things still seemed to be going in the right direction. As far as we could tell things were o.k. Well finally on Thursday morning after bleeding a fair bit throughout the night she had a water bag! Along with her, my last heifer was calving as well. The heifer was trying hard but not progressing as fast as I liked. I was just getting the chains gathered up to help her and my friend Jason stopped in. We helped her and then we went to check on the other cow. She wasn’t doing a lot and since we really didn’t know what was happening with her we pulled the calf. I was nervous. I don’t like to pull unnecessarily and I also didn’t even know if we would have a live calf. We did! It was a bigger bull but he was fine and the cow is fine and what was happening is still a mystery. The heifer was not overly impressed with her calf so it took a bit of time but within 24 hours she settled in and is a great mom. I have five left. They are all older cows so I am hoping that all the excitement and strange things are over for this season. Needless to say, all that excitement interrupted some of my work hours. Allan from the FF Times requested a calving visit but all this took place around 5:30 a.m. and in my worry I didn’t think to reach out to him. Thankfully Rebecca was able to help him out and he got to witness a successful birth. It is a tough thing to have someone come and watch. Some cows give you plenty of heads up and others not so. If you have to travel any distance you could easily miss out on it all. It is awesome. Most times the calf is born and within minutes it is up ready to nurse. Even though I have been doing this a long time they never cease to amaze me. I checked our lambing date and they can arrive anytime after the 5th of April. They are just as amazing as calves. Even though I haven’t had a decent sleep in over a month, I think I might have the coolest job ever.
I am in Guelph for Monday and Tuesday this week. I am hoping my family will all stay healthy enough for me to be away for a couple of days. I tried to have things organized for as little chores as possible. Like I’ve said before, it is all my little animals that make work for my chore boys. At least it isn’t really hard but they still require care. It is something that you don’t think much of when you are doing it yourself but when you ask someone to do it – it seems like a bit of a pain. Black Bettie alone has quite a list of dos and don’ts!
