Well, I had good intentions.
Quinlan and I went down to help out at the calving shed. The plan was to do whatever… but cleaning pens of used wet straw was going to be our priority. But first, those calves that had been weighed and tagged would have to be moved out of their comfy surroundings.
I eased Pair One out of the pen, through the gate, then through another gate, no problem. Pair Two was just as easy… until one foot shy of following mom out of the gate, the calf turned and ran back. Mom kept going. I circled around, turned the calf back, tried to shove it after mom… and it turned and ran back! Mom kept going. Argh! Again I grabbed the tail ( a convenient hand hold on occasion) started it in the right direction. It turned back. Mom kept going.
”Hey, Quinlan”, I yelled. “Come help me!”
He came and with his speed at getting ahead of the calf, we had it out the gate! Yay, us!
Where’s mom?
We attempted a few pitiful imitations of a calf bawling, but Mom had gone to eat hay and forgot she even had a calf.
We walked the calf down, across the dry-ish ditch, and up to the feed grounds. Where was Mom?
She had hoofed it clear to the end of the hay piles and was happily munching away. Ugh. I yelled for Quinlan to bring the calf my way, hoping to meet in the middle! As he brought the calf, it began to run. Then Quinlan began to run. Then every heifer (except Mom) began to run after Quinlan! New mothers can be protective and it took me a bit to shut everyone down… The heifers ran the calf clear over by the electric fence! Quinlan was there, and crawled under before I could say no, and brought the calf back. Now two heifers insisted on staying with the calf, protecting it and taking it off away from us.
Seriously?
We edged out, trying to get it eased back towards the hay where Mom was still eating merrily… They took off AGAIN, running along the electric fence. Of course, the calf was small enough to walk under one section of wire. Now it’s on the outside of the fence AGAIN and if it continued down the fence, it’d end up falling in the creek and drowning! I mean, our luck seemed to be getting worse, so why not imagine the worst!
I went through the gate and shoved the calf under and returned. We again had to find Mom. We walked the calf up to within five feet of Mom… gave it a shove in the right direction and Mom took off. I tried to cut her off but when it comes a race between me and a stupid heifer circling boxelder trees and downed limbs… that heifer will win every time!
Well, this was flat ridiculous. We’d stirred up ALL of the pairs, hopefully they could all find each other again, and still not successfully paired up calf with Mom. “That’s enough”. I shook my head. “Grab that calf, Quinlan, and drag it up here on the flat where the hay is. Mom will head back to the calving shed at some time since that’s the last place she saw it. Hopefully, she’ll smell him as she walks by.”
Quinlan had to grunt and strain to drag the calf up the little slope to the flat, where we situated the baby on some dry hay. It was pretty pooped by then! So were we. I’d tell the guys to check on them later to make sure they’d finally mothered up. We headed back to the calving shed, a little discouraged our easy job had gone so haywire. In fact, we’d been at it so long, all the chores we were going to help with had been done!
And, there our no photos of our misadventure!
My goodness, what an adventure you and Quinlan had. No wonder you were exhausted.
That’s quite a story! Hope this pair settles down to each other soon. Kudos to you and especially Quinlan.
I’ll bet y’all were exhausted!!