It has arrived. Our first babies have hit the ground. What follows will be restless nights and multiple trips to the calving shed. We have a pretty good setup here for calving. To the east side of my yard sits the heifer lot, where this year, 58 heifers will have their first babies. If I go out my side gate, it (in city terms) is about a block long hike to our calving shed. During the day, the heifers are in the lot, but every day at 5:00 we will push them into the corral and sort off those we think are close to calving. This in itself is a gamble, but close examination of the size and tightness of her bag and whether or not she is “springing” or the muscles are relaxing around her hiney can give a good indication. The rest are turned back outside. We check them every 2-4 hours. During the day, I can easily walk among them in a few minutes. At night I do the 10 pm check, Vernon does the 2 am, and Johnny drives over from his house at 5 am. We will do this every day until they have all calved. Our first two were cute little girls who arrived without help. Unfortunately today we had horrible luck. Calves present themselves front feet first, their heads laying on their legs. Vernon had one this afternoon with a leg back. That entails penning the heifer in a squeeze chute to hold her and reaching in to reposition the calf. The calf was born dead. Rotten luck. More rotten luck followed as another heifer seemed to be taking too long to present, so Vernon stuck her into the chute and pulled out a little bitty calf. Dead. Because of its size, Vernon reached in again and sure enough, felt the other twin and pulled it as well. Dead. We were 0 for 3 today. There’s nothing quite so sad as seeing the little warm bodies laying steaming on the ground. You’ve failed. But that is part of calving season.
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