One Tough Little Gal

Cute Little Gal.

Last night I knew that heifer # 42 was going to have her calf, she had put it off for several days and you could tell that it was getting very painful for her. When I was walking her into the alley for the night, her calves feet were showing, so I figured that she would have it within a few hours. Nope, she somehow managed not to have it until around 3 am, it finally fell out, a cute little gal.

Since I was tired I just figured that the heifer would 'like' her baby, after all, how could she not!! Man was I wrong. I went out in the morning, ok, a few hours later, and she hadn't even cleaned it off. The calf was laying there shivering, so I ran back to the shed and got a feed sack and ran back and dried off the calf, just thinking, 'well maybe she didn't know what to do', so I picked up the shivering, wet calf and carried it over to the heifer. Oh My Heck, the heifer waited for me to put it down and get it to stand up and she came charging towards us full speed. I thought she was going to bunt me, but wrong again - yep wrong twice in such a short period of time, can you believe that......she hit that little calf and pile drove the calf into the manurery mucky mud. Man I was sorta wishing that she had hit me instead of the calf, but a whole lot thankful that she didn't!

I ran over to the calf thinking for sure that it was dead, I know that I would have been, but it was laying there blinking it's big eyes so I picked it up and dried her off again. She quickly recovered from the body slam and started trying to suckle all of the heifers in the pasture, so I decided that if I got the rest of the heifers out of the pasture, then she would have to claim her calf. Now to my amazement, I was wrong again. This time the calf was trying to follow her across the snow so she turned around and planted the calf in the snow bank, a 2 ft bank of snow and I had to dig the calf out of the snow. Once again, the calf was just blinking and looking around, she must have been wondering why everything disapeared. Not wanting to be wrong again, I decided to leave the heifer alone and just take the calf to the coral and wait for Roger to come home and then we would put the heifer in the shoot and make her feed her calf. Even in the shoot, she was not nice to the calf, but it finally got to suckle and get some warm milk in her tummy.

Clay said that sometimes the heifers don't like their calves for a couple of days. We are suppose to leave the heifer and the calf together in the corral until she 'takes' the calf. I just hope this happens quickly, because I wanted to bring the calf home and keep warm and safe tonight! What a way to start the calving season with the heifers.....

Here's mom, where's the calf?