Calves!

The second of my first two calves was born last weekend.  I’ve been pretty excited about this as these are my first farm-babies.  I bought their mothers over a year ago, borrowed a bull to entertain them and now have two pretty little bull calves as a reward.  I’ve named them Harry and Ron.

Patsy (left) and Eddie when we got them as yearlings.

My hubby is feeling rather excited and pleased too.  He’s always said the animals are mine to deal with.  He leaves it to me to do the research, make the choices and organise their care.  In this however, he sees early steps toward self-sufficiency.  He sees that we don’t need to be buying more calves to raise for the freezer.  He’s a little disappointed that they’re both boys as he was hoping to build up the herd with at least one girl.  But there is next year and we also have another heifer who is currently approaching a year old, so she’ll be worth breeding in not too short a time.

The other thing I pointed out to him is that the calves effectively cost us $20 each.  He stopped and looked at me puzzled, “how do you figure that?” he asked.  We had their mothers, the bull cost us only the transport to get him to our place.  $40 for a horse float (and a couple of hours - most of which was spent trying to get him into the float but that’s another story).

Having said all of that, our second calf Ron, is most likely not the spawn of the handsome Campbell, the purebred black dexter bull we were able to borrow.  Eddie, his mother is also a purebred black dexter and our Ron is a lovely cinnamon brown.  Ron at birth, is also taller than his 2 week old cousin Harry who is a beautiful glossy black.  It’s hard to tell though, I know there are also red dexters and both my girls have a tint of the red on their winter coat.  He could be a throwback.  Or not.  We had an invasion of bulls from the neighbours who lifted gates off their hinges.  You can read about that here. 

I had worried all the way through my girl’s pregnancies that Eddie at least may be carrying a calf that would be too big for her to deliver by herself.  I watched her growth anxiously, I spoke to numerous people and after getting so much conflicting advice I rang the vet.  No, he told me, restricting their food for the last month isn’t recommended as it can cause metabolic problems in the calf.  Upon learning that we may have fresian crosses he changed his mind (sort of).  Normally, they like your cows to have a body condition score of 6 for calving, but recommended that I try to get my girls down to a 5.  He sent me to this website that clearly shows how to score them.

I tried and I tried.  I left them in a fairly small paddock and gave them hay.  I’m told they won’t gain weight on hay, but it will maintain their condition.  It didn’t seem to matter what I did, I couldn’t see any ribs.  They got too big with calves for ribs to be showing at all.

I had a good friend who is also a dairy farmer have a look at them.  At least a week he thought.  Three days later, we moved them into the front paddock so I could keep an eye on them.  I was walking along behind them and noticed stringy looking mucous hanging from their nether bits.  If they were people I’d call it a bloody show, but I guess all mammals have similar things.  20 minutes later, Patsy was making some odd noises so I went to check.

Patsy and Harry (about a week old).

She was lying down and her belly was rippling.  That looked like a contraction to me.  I had a couple of good friends there at the time who were both farm-raised.  They came to the fence too and confirmed that.  We watched her for the next few minutes and saw feet emerging.  I was trying to see if the feet were pointing up or down but they were so small it was hard to tell.  Then we saw a nose poking out too.  It was maybe 20 minutes total from start to finish.

Eddie came over to see what was going on and licked the calf too.  The calf finally stood up and started to go towards Eddie for a feed.  Eddie stomped on it and kicked it quite hard.  Several times.  Then she tried to get between Patsy and her calf.  We had to separate them.

That was difficult.  Eddie is normally the sweeter natured of the two but she was confused.  Patsy and Eddie had also been together since they were born.  But the three of us managed it.  A bit of musical paddocks followed and after a day or so I was able to swap them around so that Eddie was in the front paddock where I could keep an eye on her and Patsy and her calf were in the paddock behind them.

Eddie hung in there for another two weeks.  She was showing all the signs of being close.  Her udder was so full it looked ready to burst and the teats were pointing off in different directions.  I made sure that I saw her every couple of hours or so.  One morning, I noticed that I hadn’t seen her at all, so I went for a walk down the far end of the paddock.  There she was, with a lovely little calf at her feet.  He was lying down and had been cleaned up.  His coat seemed dry so he was probably at least an hour old.

I wanted to see him on his feet and feeding.  I was worried that Eddie would reject him after the way she’d behaved towards Patsy’s calf.  The second or third time I went out to check, I climbed the fence and went fairly close but on the other side of the fence.  He got up, stretched and ran over to Eddie.

Eddie and Ron (about 2 hours old) with Patsy through gate.

He was fine.  He had enough energy for a wobbly frolic, he dropped a massive poo that wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been fed.  But as he stood by the gate to the paddock where Patsy and her calf were, Patsy’s calf was standing next to it - the new one, a couple of hours old was taller.

They’re all doing well now.  I’ve finally put them all together in one paddock again.  There was a bit of investigation of each other but I’m sure it will all sort itself out soon.