New Born Calf

Just another typical day at Glory Farm for me.  I cleaned up some animal poop, I went to watch a calf being born and I started a new job.

 Yep, regular life on the farm.

 Okay, so I missed the actual birth of the calf, as it went very quickly (probably not quick enough for the cow however), getting there just in time to watch the mom start licking her offspring to clean it up.

The licking went on for quite some time, interspersed with looks over at me from the new mom.

Our Friend the Farmer had alerted me that this cow was calving and had pointed me down the road.  I stayed outside the fence to be polite and because the last thing I wanted was to tick off a 1200 lb. protective maternal cow with postpartum.  I  stood by taking pictures and waiting for the little guy to get on his legs and it was really pretty neat.

There was lots of maternal licking…

And he is up for a second….

And then the front legs go down…

And then the back legs go down….

So he tries again…

But after 40 minutes the little guy was not getting the whole ‘getting up’ together.  As official calf watcher, I was getting quite cold.  Luckily for us both, Our Friend the Farmer came back to check on the ‘getting up progress’.  The problem he explained to me was that the cow had the calf where the snow was deeper making the calf’s footing that much slicker.  The more the calf rolled around in the snow the colder it was going to become, which was not good.  The Farmer and his Top Man were going to give it some help and move it to steadier ground.  I was lucky enough to hop on to the back of the truck and get a front row seat on the action.

Into the deeper snow Our Friend the Farmer goes and  grabs the calf by the hoof (not foot, as My Loving ‘Proof-reader’ informed me).  I don’t think the mother cow was too keen on this, but she probably trusts the farmer as part of the herd.  After all, he brings her food everyday and he was carrying a big stick, his trusty shovel.

Baby calf gets a gentle ‘drag’ to less snowy ground, followed closely by Mama.

Okay, let’s do this thing…

The Farmer takes hold of the calf’s tail and gets it standing on his feet, giving him a bit of time to steady himself.

And he is up!!!

Not too steady, but up…

He’ll get warmer quicker up on his feet and out of the thick snow.

Mommmmmmmmm!!!

Then the oddest thing happened.  I had been watching the cows for about 45 minutes.  The mother and baby were off by themselves and the herd was calming doing what cows do… eating and pooping, but they all stayed away from the two-some.  Except, after the baby was up and we were leaving in the truck, all the cows came over surrounding the new mom and calf.   It was almost as if the signal had gone out that said, Mother and baby are out, time to extend our welcome.   I could just almost hear the cows saying, “Oh, Daisy, what a nice little calf you’ve got there!”  Then there was probably a lot of cow ‘sighing’ as they are all pregnant and their time is coming, so I will have another shot at catching a live calving.