It is calving season and believe it or not, but Number Two Son had not seen a calf born, so I have been doing my level best to help him capture the complete country experience. So far this meant a lot of driving by the farmer’s field, sitting there watching cows poop. As Number Two still has a broken wrist, he’s activities have been severely limited, to the point that he’s actually been a willing captive to his mother’s you-need-to-see-a-calf-born obsession.
Saturday nights it seems are the night we are ‘on call’ as it were to be Our Friend the Farmer’s Calving Assistants, lucky for us! We’d invited Our Friend the Farmer for dinner, and knowing my interest in his calving, he walked in the door with an update on one of his heifers. “She’s been ‘monkeying’ around all afternoon”. ‘Monkeying’ around is his official farmer language to mean, she’s calving and it is not going quickly. As soon as dinner was over, he headed off to check on the heifer. We threw the dishes in the dishwasher and headed off behind him, bringing Number Two with us, in case we got to see a calf born OR in case Our Friend the Farmer needed us. (I’m often not sure, if he ‘needs‘ us as much as perhaps he is ‘humoring‘ us, but either way…I’m IN!)
The heifer’s water had broken a long time ago and nothing was happening with this calf. No feet sticking out…nothing… As a heifer has never calved before, assisting in the birth, Our Friend explained can sometimes upset the process and they may not mother the calf properly. Still..nothing was happening, so it was time to give her a hand. We Our Friend the Farmer got her in the head catch. I held the heifer’s tail out of the way while he reached in (yes, into the heifer…this is why he doesn’t wear rings) to feel for the calf.
“It’s alive”, he said as he grabbed a hold of a hoof. It was a slow process to get the hoof out straight and far enough to wrap the chain around it, but after a bit of work he had the calving OB assisting chains around both front hoofs. Things were progressing when that darn heifer sat down on her back legs, head still in the catch. I checked she wasn’t choking and My Loving Spouse took over the tail holding as Our Friend the Farmer went back to the calf pulling…and before we knew it…out he came…a little bull calf. 
The mother stayed right where she was…sitting on her haunches.
The little bull was pulled around to his mother and some of the fluids wiped on the cow’s nose to help her identify with her little one. The heifer was still just sitting on her haunches as if to say…”What in the world just happened or (Bad British word)!!”
I kept waiting for the heifer’s mother instinct to slam into gear and for her to go “Mooooo, WOW, baby look at this calf! Let me lick that little one all up!” Except, she didn’t…she was taking her time, even after she was able to get up, she was still acting a tad stunned as if Mother Nature had possibly played a mean trick on her. Actually in her defense, I do remember being a tad stunned myself after natural childbirth, where I was all in favor of having some drugs, but the darn baby (Thank you Number Two) came so fast I didn’t get any….and so maybe she is a normal Mama after all. She did finally wander over and take another sniff of the wet bundle of black hide and finally began giving him a lick.
As for Number Two Son, he has had an experience he is sure to remember forever. Although, I am pretty sure it has not altered his career path to ‘Calving Photographer Up Close’.
