Jan
7
Written by:
Sherri
1/7/2010 4:36 PM
Nov. 22 was like most other Sunday's around here....milking and farm chores took up a good piece of the morning, then a quick breakfast and we were off to church. Upon arriving home and having lunch, it was time to go out and do the afternoon farm chores. The boys all have their specific chores to do....one of James' is to feed the cows and check on them. Pansy, our Holstein/Jersey cross due to freshen in Dec., didn't come for feeding. James thought that strange, since costal hay and alfalfa are her favorites. So he went looking for Pansy. What he found made him run/walk all the way to the house, arriving breathlessly. Excitedly, he knocked on the kitchen back door, where I was working. I have NEVER seen this child at a loss for words, but James was that time! He barely managed to get out, "Pansy's had a calf and has blood on her back side"! I asked if he saw the calf and if it was alive. He didn't know. So we all went into emergency mode...wondering if the calf needed assistance... we changed clothes quickly then discussed how we were going to get to the back pasture, which of course is where Pansy had decided to give birth. To complicate matters, Ted had injured his knee several weeks prior and was still wallking on a cane, and then not very far. So this necessiated me taking the family to the back pasture in the pickup, which was very muddy (as it has been all year, except for 3 hot dry summer months!).
We all made it to the back pasture and found Pansy up and doing just fine... hoarsely mooing to her newborn bull calf who was still on the ground. He had the umbilical cord drapped loosely over his head, and we got to see him try to stand up. Within a few minutes he was standing and searching for his milk. Meanwhile, Ted managed to walk out to Pansy (we couldn't drive the pickup all the way due to the mud...and you don't want to know how many times we've already gotten the pickup stuck this year 
.). So picture this...Ted's leaning on his cane in the muddy field, talking on his cell phone first to one farmer friend, then to another one. After determining that both mama and baby were fine, we then were facing our next challenge. It was approaching late afternoon and we had less than one hour before dark fell... and the coyotes came out 
. Our farmer friends (who have strapping teenage boys) had casually said, "Just pick up the calf and carry him back to the barn." Ted & I looked at each other and realized neither of us could do this task. Two of our three boys weren't big enough. James was the only option. Weighing in around 100 lbs. for James and the calf probably weighing in around 50 lbs., this proved more than even he could manage. We even tried the wheelbarrow and another little trailer that the tractor pulls....ever tried to get a squiggling newborn animal to lay down while you wheel it somewhere??? We could see none of these options were going to work. Ted got back on the phone to farmer friend #2 and said we've got an emergency situation. This time he talked to the right member of the family (those with big families know you gotta talk to the OLDER kids) and they said they'd send someone over right away. Thirty minutes later a strong strapping farm boy came and casually picked up the calf and carried him to the barn. Sun was setting and we thought we had things pretty much under control...Pansy and baby were safe for the night, the pickup didn't get stuck and we still had some daylight to finish our other farm chores. Then this young man advised us to start milking Pansy the next morning or her production would go down for this whole milking season. Ted & I looked at each other....we weren't expecting to do that for another 2 months! This was November. Pansy's calf hadn't been expected to come until December. We didn't expect to start milking Pansy until January! Suddenly, overnight we had 2 cows to start milking each morning! And Ted wasn't even doing the milking at that time due to his injured knee!
For those who have been on the farm some time, milking another cow probably isn't a big deal. For those newbies on the farm like us, it's a BIG DEAL! Suddenly we've faced with problems and questions we hadn't had before....which cow gets milked first, how do we re-establish the milking routine for Pansy and get her into the barn, do we bring the calf too, do we clean the machine between each cow, do we have enough glass jars for the extra milk, and where do we store the extra milk???? We had a whole 12 hours to sort it out, with most of those hours sleeping time.
Re-establishing Pansy's milking routine did take a few days and it took us all awhile to get the routine down of changing out cows, and we did get the milk abundance taken care off....but we've never been able to cut down our milking time by much...it's pretty much the milking time x 2, which means it takes us most of the morning to do the milking and take care of our other animals.
But watching Pansy's new bull calf has been soooooo fun! Since he was a bull, he will grow up to grace our table with abundant beef in a few years. For this reason, his name is C.R. (for Chuck Roast). We had to name him something 
. Watching a newborn calf walk, run, explore the field, check out the gates, investigate the cats.... is pure entertainment. It's what us farmers live for 
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Copyright ©2010 Sherri Maines