Ramblings on Our Newest Adventure

This was written Saturday late afternoon or evening: (And there will be more updates coming soon) Sorry this is so much rambling. I wasn't sure if I would even post it but hey, this is a blog about our life and farm and this is what is going on right now=)

We have 9 first calf heifers that are all supposed to be having calves any day now. A heifer is a girl "cow" that has not ever had a calf. A first calf heifer is, a girl cow that is pregnant with her first calf. Make sense? Okay, good =) Anyway, you have to watch first calf heifers more closely than seasoned mama cows who have had several, because their deliveries may be more difficult with things not ever having been stretched out like that before. They should be bred to a bull that should produce low birth weight calves, to help make calving their first easier. So we have nine of these lovely ladies that we have been watching for the past several weeks, just waiting to see any signs that their labor is imminent. In fact, this past week, I have gone nowhere except taking Lillie to school and going to church on Wednesday evening. (Though not necessarily because of the cows-anyone noticed gas prices lately?) And Lillie has been asking me, "Why do you always have to check on the cows?" Because I am constantly going out there. I would really like to be out there for the delivery! One of them has seemed to be ready to have her calf for the past week or even two weeks. But she just kept taking her merry time. So, from Monday-Friday this week I have been out there watching them and Matt even gets up during the night to go check on them. And today, seeing no more progress this morning we thought we were in the clear for awhile, I took the kids to eat lunch at d'Veers and then we headed to my little brothers' basketball game. We were gone 3 hours. Three hours. That's it. And wouldn't you know, in that 3 hour time span, the heifer that we have been watching the closest, had her calf. I knew almost right away when I drove in the driveway. I could see some white stuff out in their pen and I was sure I had never noticed anything white in the hay pile before. So I carried each of the boys up to their beds, because they fell asleep on the way home from the ball game. Then I rushed out there to see a newborn calf, seemingly just born, lying behind its mother. The calf didn't really look like he was breathing well or even much at all, so I stirred the mom enough to get her to get up and start licking the calf. And I could see that the birth sac was still over the calf's face so I got that off of it so it would not suffocate (although, it may have already done too much damage because I don't know how long the calf and mama had been lying there before I got home). But it still didn't look quite right to me, how little he was moving and breathing. I called the vet and they said give it about 30 minutes to let the cow and calf bond and see if anything is happening then call back if I needed to. In that time, I realized that the calf had not been breathing and was most certainly not going to make it. I got Matt's sister on the phone to go get him from their house where he was working on his new pickup (no cell phone reception and he couldn't hear the house phone). When he got home, I was so upset that we had lost our calf and especially that I hadn't been home to help it but he wanted to go out there to it right away. We got out there and he rubbed his finger in the calf's nose and pushed around on him a little to try and get it to start sniffing and breathing some. And it seemed to work! The calf was miraculously breathing again. And it even was softly mooing to his mama and the mama would answer him back. We were very excited. But then he just would not get up or even lift his head up. We called a friend who has done this kind of thing much longer than we have to come help us. We tried to force feed it but it did not work and the poor little calf ended up not making it. I am sad for it's mama too. We are all so sad around here this evening. Lillie and Titus were so excited about the newborn calf and they got to see it but then were so confused why it had to die. We didn't have much to tell them. But we do have some speculations. We think that the mama just had too hard of a time pushing the baby out. Remember at the beginning I said that a heifer's first calf should have a low birth weight. That means around 50 pounds. Well, we weighed this little guy and he weighed 85 pounds!! So we are assuming that this particular mama cow was a week or two past her due date and the calf just got too big. And since we weren't home watching, we didn't know that she was having trouble. If they take too long once they are in active labor, the chances of survival for the calf are very low. But all the signs were there a couple of weeks ago for her to be having the calf and it just didn't progress far enough. And this was our first calf as well. Since this is the first time we have ever had a "herd", we are definitely still learning. And sad that we lost our first one. We are hoping and praying the other mamas will have an easier go of it. And we will be watching much closer from now on.