Peekaboo

This time of year, when the snow is off the ground but not much is growing yet, the feedboxes in the barn are a popular hangout.

The winter babies are learning to eat hay. I don't know if they particularly like it, but they're learning.

Like mother, like daughter: Sparky with Hickory.

The babies mouth the hay and delicately eat it, but at this age they vastly prefer mama's milk.

When I do the morning feeding, the babies eye me warily. To them, we're strange two-footed cows.

As you can see on this little guy, the dehorning scars are healing nicely.

The cows aren't the only ones who hang around the feedboxes.

It's no wonder we often find eggs in here.

Just a little snapshot of early spring around the homestead.

Birthin' another baby

Saturday afternoon as I was starting some early outside chores, I happened to notice little Hickory nursing off Amy.

Let me repeat this: Hickory, who is Sparky's calf, was nursing off Amy, who (at the moment) didn't have a calf.

It's not unusual for calves to "double dip" from other willing cows, but this took on the air of absolute gorging. Greedy Hickory nursed and nursed and nursed, while Amy just stood there and took it.

After a while, Amy laid down, and Hickory still tried to figure out how to get the good stuff.

Then Amy stood up. Then she laid down. Then she gave low moos. And half an hour later, Hickory was still sucking down the milk.

So I clipped Amy's halter to a lead rope, and I tucked her into the barn, which was set with soft bedding and fresh hay. Inside the house, I told Don, "I'm about 75% sure Amy is in early labor."

A couple hours later, near evening, I said, "Since nothing's happening, maybe I'll go ahead and let Amy out of the barn."

"Don't bother," he told me. "You'd just be tucking her back in within an hour."

He was right, but since Amy didn't have any water, I filled a bucket and brought it into her pen; and saw...

She had dropped that calf literally 30 seconds before I walked in. "Not wasting any time!" I gasped, as I dashed into the house to grab my camera (which I had foolishly left behind). "Good call!" said Don, referencing my concern about tucking Amy into the barn in case she was in early labor.

The amniotic sac was still around the baby's head, so Amy got to work removing it.

The weather was chilly but not the bitter, bitter cold we had over the last week (-6F in the mornings), so I'm glad Amy held off until things improved.

I couldn't take many more photos since it was getting so dark in the barn, but I was able to determine Amy's calf was a little boy, and he wobbled to his feet and got his first drink of colostrum (what Hickory didn't suck down first, ha ha) in due time.

Today's weather has been beyond hideous. We've had blizzard conditions: howling wind, blowing snow, drifts closing our driveway and the road, etc. If ever I've been glad to have shelter for the animals, it's days like this. Amy is rather bored, alone in the pen, but at least she and her baby are sheltered from the elements.

Here's the view from the pen. What's not terribly visible are the sheets of sideways-blowing snow. Yowza it's been a wild day.

This little guy (so far unnamed) is Calf #3 out of 5. We can only hope the two remaining cows choose more decent weather to birth their babies...but if not, we'll be vigilant.

Dehorning Hickory

If there's one thing we prefer to do with our heifers, it's dehorn them. We've had cows with horns, and believe me, life is much easier without them. We usually don't bother dehorning the steers since they invariably have a date with the freezer when they're about two years old, and our philosophy is: Why waste a perfectly good dehorning on a steer?

But heifers become cows, and cows are generally with us for a long time, so we find it's best if they don't have horns with which they push others (including us) around.

We use dehorning paste. Another thing we learned (the hard way) is dehorning paste has a shelf life. Always look at the expiration date. We needed fresh paste this year, and at the feed store I noticed they had some paste expiring in 2018, and the rest in 2020. Guess which I picked up.

The first thing we needed to do was get Sparky and Hickory inside the barn, where we could separate out the calf into a smaller pen. In the absence of farm hands (i.e. our daughters), Don and I parked the vehicles to form a funnel toward the barn door. It worked.

Then we assembled our dehorning kit: Hair clippers, Vaseline, Popsicle sticks, dehorning paste, duct tape, and a light (it's quite dark in the pen). The hair clippers are to shave away the hair over the horn buds; the Vaseline is to draw a circle around the buds to corral the paste; the Popsicle stick is used to apply the paste and keep it off our hands; and the duct tape is to keep the paste from getting on the mother, either her tongue (from licking at the calf) or her udder (when the calf nurses).

There is a fairly small window of opportunity for using dehorning paste on calves. It's best used when the baby is between three and ten days old, and the little horn buds can be felt under the skin. One time we were going to dehorn a calf, but for the life of us we couldn't feel her horn buds; so rather than risk applying the paste and damaging her skull, we waited a few more days until the buds could be felt.

Here's the light we used to illuminate the pen where we worked. A friend gave us two of these lights. They're very bright -- 500 lumens -- and can be propped up or hung up. Very nice to have.

Both of us had our hands way too full to take photos of the actual dehorning procedure (if you're interested, we have an ebooklet on the process here), but it went fine even with Sparky bellowing at us nonstop right outside the pen. Distressed cows are LOUD.

As soon as Hickory's head was wrapped with duct tape, we released her to her mama, who instantly calmed down.

Many calves understandably fight the duct tape, but this little girl was very calm the whole time it was on.

We left Sparky and Hickory in the barn all day until late afternoon, at which point we separated the calf once more and clipped away the duct tape (this takes about 30 seconds). Then we released both mama and baby back outside.

What I like about dehorning paste is it's both aesthetic and painless (at least, if the calf's behavior is anything to go by). As soon as Hickory was released from the barn, she was galloping and skipping around in typical baby high spirits -- and we can look forward to a cow who will never develop horns.

Since we're keeping little Ferdinand as a bull, we'll also be dehorning him in the next few days as well.

Where's Sparky?

This morning I went about doing the usual barn chores: release the chickens, open the corral gate, check the water tank, and finally pitch hay into the feed bins for the cows.

Two cows (Matilda and her adult calf Amy) stay in the barn, so that leaves four cows (Polly, Pixie, Victoria, and Sparky) under the awning. But this morning, only three cows showed up for breakfast. Where was Sparky?

Somehow I knew. I grabbed my camera and headed down to the woods. Sure enough, there was Sparky, standing protectively over the first calf of the season. The baby was already dry and on its feet, meaning it was born overnight.

We know all six of our cows are due in about the next month or so, so we've been watching udders. Usually a swollen udder is a telltale sign that birth is imminent. But I ask you, does this udder look swollen to you? Yeah, didn't think so. Can't even see it among all the fur.

At any rate, considering it's January, this little girl -- yes, it's a heifer -- couldn't have been born at a better time. Yesterday was cold, rainy, and nasty. The rain moved out overnight, the temperature hovered just at freezing but not below, and today we actually had weak sunshine and it rose to 40F.

While Don had his morning coffee, I cleaned Matilda/Amy's pen and made it ready with fresh food and water. Then we went out to fetch the calf up out of the woods. Naturally Sparky had moved from the original spot I saw her, but after beating the property for fifteen minutes we finally found her conveniently closer to the barn. I scooped up the baby while Don herded Sparky and opened gates. Within a remarkably short time, Sparky and baby were safely in the barn.

Ah, nothing like a little meconium to start the day.

It's a beautiful, healthy calf, and Sparky is a good mother.

We spent the day addressing the logistics of mid-winter calves. I'm grateful our winter is mild (unlike last winter) and we have no snow on the ground at the moment. But we can't have calves in the feedlot, which drains poorly and gets knee-deep in mud during wet weather. Our plan is to fence off the awning and open the gate to the driveway area, which is rocked and firm. This would give the animals access to the barn awning for food and shelter, while giving them room to roam around the driveway to stretch their legs and let the calves gambol.

For the moment, Sparky will need to stay in the barn until we have the driveway cow-proof. Don put the tractor to use and cleaned out under the awning...

...while I cleaned out another pen in the barn and made it ready for Sparky and baby to spend the night.

The pen is small, but now it has fresh bedding, water, and hay. We'll be playing musical cows for a few days, but as long as everyone has shelter, that's fine.

We're expecting three to six inches of snow over the next few days, so I'm grateful Sparky had her baby when she did. In fact, the first snow squall moved in just as we settled the animals for the night.

(What's not really visible in this photo is the wind blowing sheets of snow sideways.)

Looks like we'll be doubling our herd in the next month or so. Okay ladies, who's next?

Meanwhile, I thought about naming the new baby Hickory. She is smoky-black at the moment, but I suspect she'll turn dark brown as she gets older.

The first of six calves. In the middle of winter. Oy vey.

Calves popping out everywhere

Holy cow (no pun intended), we've got calves popping out all over.

Late Saturday night, around 10 pm, Victoria had her calf in the pasture. I tried to get a flash photo without much luck.

Sunday morning we went to fetch the calf to the barn. It's a boy, so we needed to have him close to castrate.

Out came Don with the faithful calf cage on the tractor.

The calf cage has made life much easier for us. Here's Victoria and her baby in the barn...

...which adjoins the corral...

...where Lucy and her baby are still residing until the baby is old enough to castrate.

This meant the two calves got to play. Very cute.

Meanwhile Matilda's calf, I'm pleased to report, found the faucet after only two days, relieving me of twice-a-day milking and bottle-feeding the calf.

We've kept Matilda in the driveway area until such time as we could castrate.

Then Monday morning, shortly after Younger Daughter came stumbling out of bed rubbing her eyes, she looked out the window and said casually, "Looks like another cow in labor." There's a country kid for ya.

Sure enough, Sparky was having her baby.

She was at the "two hoof" stage. Birth is usually within half an hour at this point.

No privacy for a cow. Everyone wandered over to offer moral support.

Finally, after a lot of pushing, straining, and groaning...

...she delivered the calf.

As well as all the amniotic fluid.

Immediately Sparky started licking the calf. Licking accomplishes three things: It cleans the calf, it stimulates circulation, and it familiarizes the mother with the calf's unique scent. (Trust me on this. With multiple calves gamboling through a field, I've seen a mother sniff one calf and move on to another it since it didn't smell like hers.)

Lots of curiosity about the newcomer.

It's a little heifer, a rich chestnut brown.

After fifteen minutes or so, her first shaky attempt to stand.

We gave Sparky and her baby a few hours to rest, then out came the calf cage once again. The heifer won't need castrating, of course, but we'll dehorn her.

Here's Sparky and the baby in the barn. The calf is a good strong nurser.

This makes six calves so far -- four bull calves and two heifers. We've steered the bull calves and dehorned one of the heifers (we'll have to wait about five days for Sparky's calf).

You'll notice, however, with the exception of Pixie (Polly's calf) I haven't given any names to the calves. That's because I thought I'd run a calf-naming competition among all of you, dear readers. We're waiting on one, possibly two mores calves, and when the full cadre has arrived, I'll post pictures and genders and invite reader participation.

We've had so many calves popping out that frankly we're dry on names; but it will be fun to hear all of your clever suggestions.