Calving 2014

Well, I think it is safe to say that calving was bit rough this year.  It started around the beginning of March and it was freezing and it stayed freezing for a long time.  It was not just sort of cold it was below -15 a lot of the time.  In fact it is now May and I am not surprised to wake of to a skiff of snow on the ground.  I think we still get snow at least once a week these days.  So our first calf came on a rather cold day and what does a good farmer do to warm it up, they bring it in the back hall of course and warm it up with a hair blower.  (after about the fifth cow in our back hall we bought a calf warmer)

Some of  our great stories from this year are:

So Ryan, with some help, separated the cows from the heifers one day after school.  So that it would be easier to watch the heifers. He spent quite a while doing this. So that night he didn't come in and finally when it was about midnight I went to see what was going on.  So here I find him running around like a lunatic trying to get the heifers back into the coral. (he had accidentally left a gate open) So I try to help him, but the cows will not budge because they are enjoying endless hay.  Then he goes and gets the tractor to try to get them to follow him, but that doesn't work either.  So then he has a great idea, use Skip (Robert's horse) to round up one cow at a time.  So I am on gate duty and there I wait for each cow.  (it is not warm and by now it is about 2 in the morning)  Well we have about 15 cows in and Ryan has been gone for a long time. (I am now freezing) He finally comes back and has found a heifer that is having baby and it needs to be pulled.  So there we go, we then pull a calf.  Now it is really late and we really need to go to bed.  So I look over at the coral and who would believe it, but the cows are all out again.  ( I guess I forgot to close a gate)  Lets just say it was a long night.  (the cows did just follow the tractor in the morning, I think next time we will just let them eat hay all night)

 Drying calves by night.  Oh yes I just have to go play the viola da gamba in a concert.  (I'd say I was quite the renaissance women) just joking

 This is how the calves come into the house.

 One day I came home to hay and a mess in the bathroom.  I questioned what had gone on in there, oh yeah Ryan had tried to revive a calf in the bathtub.

 This little calf was born with a slow start.  He couldn't walk and we had to bottle feed him for about a week.  He made it though and he is out in the field.  The kids could pet him because he was so slow. He was our Easter miracle, he rose on the third day.  I called him Harold.

 Mary is obsessed with anything that is outside.  I think it is because we spent the whole winter inside.  She can't get enough of it.  The minute the door opens she grabs her snowsuit and hat and tries to get out.  We put her carseat on the gator and she goes out with Ryan.  She loves it.

This is vector, his white face is sort of like a V.  She is one of the cutest this year.  She is one of the three that has a white face.

Another story is the night Ryan heard a cow bawling.  He had separated out about ten cows that had lost their calves earlier that day.  So he thought maybe that he had accidentally separated a wrong cow. But he wasn't wrong, so he let the cow out and it ran out into the field. It found a calf that started sucking on it, but it wasn't its calf.  Then all of a sudden a heifer started sucking on the cow, the heifer was the calfs mother.  Lets just say it was the circle of life.