More Pics of the Babies!

I cannot resist these cutie pies! I had to post some more pics of them as I have taken a ton of them already!  They are doing great and seem to be healthy.  They both drink from mommas well.  The little girl runs and jumps around the pasture but the little boy still lays around a lot.

 Little Mr. (no name yet)

Little Miss April

Such cuteness at the farm here now!  It was definitely worth the wait to see these two.  I am so excited for the others to arrive.  

Happy Easter!!

Our Cow's Labor Stages

Yesterday as I was driving past the pasture I noticed our cow, Mabel, standing with her tail straight out and looking like she was straining with nothing coming out (or so I thought from that far away).  Also, she was in the corner of the pasture away from the herd.  This was about 2:30pm.  I rushed right down with her in time to catch all of this:

 This is what she looked like when I first saw her.

When she turned I could see this discharge from her vaginal area.

After a few pushes like above it seemed she was pushing harder and her tail would curl.  This went on for a few pushes. 

Finally I was able to see just a little of the bag starting to appear.

More and more bag appeared with each push.  She seemed to be progressing just fine.

Finally she laid down to push.  Even more bag was visible.

A few more hard pushes and it is hard to see with the weeds, but the baby is being delivered in this photo. (Unluckily she moved behind these weeds just before this) This was around 3:30pm.  This all was right at or just over an hour after I noticed labor had begun. (Not exact on times due to watching cow not my watch!)

It took momma a minute or so to get up after delivery and I was starting to get a little nervous because I couldn't see the baby moving.  A couple licks from mom and I could see movement!

Baby is all black and is still being cleaned off just minutes after birth.  Already seems very alert.

And baby calf stands!  This was the first full stand after a few failed attempts.  This was roughly 10 minutes after birth.

Later that evening we went to check on the calf and found out he is a boy!  He is 7/8 angus and 1/8 maine anjou.  

Today we were able to check out the black white-faced calf born earlier yesterday and she is a girl!  I am so excited about that because she will be retained for breeding.  Both calves are great looking babies and we are so happy with them.  I feel privileged to have witnessed such an event.  I did stay back a ways so that momma could have her room to do her thing, but she is a wonderful gentle and tolerant cow so she lets us touch and pet the calf anytime.  She is also very protective and rarely leaves his side.

We feel so blessed this year already and have a few more to go!  

The Waiting is Killing Me!

I wait and wait as patiently as possible every year for our cows to calve.  This for me is not easy as I am not a very patient person.  It is now officially driving me CRAZY! 

This week marks the third week that Mabel has been oozing mucous from her behind.  It is getting thicker day by day.  Each day I get excited when I see this and check on her often -usually 2-3 times per day.  So far, no additional progress except that her milk bag is enormous.  In my past experience, which is not vast by any means, once they start this process it doesn't only take a couple days to deliver the calf.  

Maria is also getting close as she has a behind that is so swollen it looks like it will explode.  No other indications that it is impending, except that her bag is also getting full. They both have difficulty getting up from laying down and look so uncomfortable.  According to the vet's calculations last October, these 2 are both due around today!  We always try to guess who will be first and this year it is truly a tossup.  I won't even venture to guess at this point, but I do think that Red will be the third to calve.

This year is extra exciting due to our horrendously cold winter months we had.  Spring, hopefully, is definitely here!

Also, if you haven't noticed yet please check out my new page: Our Girls.  It is a tribute to our breeding girls!

Time to get outside and enjoy this wonderful weather! 

(forecast 74 degrees here today!)

Bulls and Sex of Calves

As we await the arrival of our first calves, this is the time of year we begin thinking about breeding this year and coming up with our plan.

Last year we decided to purchase a bull, use him for a few months and resell him at the local cattle sale.  This did work out for us, but being an older bull with worsening feet, I was very worried something would happen to him before we could get him sold.  Everything worked out fine and he was sold in October and it ended up costing us roughly $300 to breed 5 cows.

Thanks to a very nice woman who raises some of the nicest polled hereford cattle I have ever seen, we will be purchasing our own 2 year old bull. He will not come to our farm until we are done calving this year. His name is Apollo and he is a magnificent looking creature that will add some color to our herd, which is important to us(mainly me).  Everyone in Iowa has black cows and we prefer each cow have it's own look, because they all do have their own personality!

Apollo

I have learned a great deal from this nice older woman whose family has been raising polled herefords since before she was born.  One of the most interesting things I have learned is that the bull "picks" the sex of the calf.  She said that in her experience if the bull lunges to mount the cow, it will almost always produce a male.  If the bull gently atops her, it will produce a female.  So, if the bull is young  and has to kind of jump up there it should produce more males. It has something to do with the difference in speed, agility and longevity of the sperm.  I remember reading this sort of information about people when I was in my baby-making days.

I will be keeping track this year of the sex of our calves born to kind of test this hypothesis.  Our bull last year was a massive 4 year old that I would say did not lunge, so by her rule I predict we should have mostly bull calves.  We shall see!

I hope everyone has an amazing day today! 

Happy April Fools Day!!  

Artificial Insemination vs. Bull Breeding

As you may have read, we have a small herd of cows here at our farm.  Most of them are previous 4H projects that we have kept on and bred and kept most of our baby girls.  When we had a couple of them we would send them to another farmer to be bred for a couple months and retrieved them before winter snow hit.  We now, however, had more than a handful to breed.  My son's 4H heifer went to a neighbor for special breeding this year, so that left me with 6 of my own.  

Artificial insemination, as we tried last year, is very time consuming requiring lots of watching and scheduling from me and multiple trips by the vet.  It was very reasonably priced for 3 cows last year, but when we only had 1 calf this year he became one pricey calf!  This year we happened on a bull that was on his way to the salebarn that would cost me a pretty penny, but we could take him to the salebarn and get most of our money back by fall.  That was the whole plan, anyway.  

This black bull was a purebred Angus that had a descent temperament.  I have always been a little nervous to have a bull around!   But, he did well at staying away from us for the most part and we steered clear of him.  

The vet came to preg-check cows after the bull had been here almost 3 months and we no longer saw him breeding any of them for few weeks.  We had 4 confirmed pregnant, 1 probably that jumped the gate before she was checked and 1 possibly that we did not check.  We also had one negative heifer that had been with him for just over 2 months that we took to the sale barn with him.  That was a lot better breeding ratio that the AI last year!  

We sold the bull and only lost $300 on him, which is a small overall cost of breeding possibly 6 cows.  I was hoping for a little more, but one never knows what the salebarn may bring.  

Next year, we are planning to get a bull again as it is overall much easier and much greater breeding ratio.  The only downfall is the huge expense to get one and renting one around here is over twice as much as he actually ended up costing us. 

Artificial Insemination vs. Natural Breeding in Cows

My debate continues between artificial insemination and natural breeding our cows with a bull.  There are many pros and cons to both sides as I will list, but it really is a matter of preference for each farm hobbyist or full time farmer.  I know some farmers who AI all the cows and never have had a bull and some farmers who swear by keeping a bull.

By artificially inseminating cows there is no other mouth to feed, it is relatively low cost and no aggressive bull to worry about while out in the field checking or working with cows.  The downside is that it is very time consuming for the owner scheduling the vet, watching for heat and rescheduling the vet, watching for re -heat and watching for miscarriages down the road and heat again. 

Keeping a bull is a huge investment to begin with.  They are pricey, but if you can find a decent deal, when finished with him you may make your money back at the sale barn.  There is another mouth to feed and another animal to worry about getting hurt or worse.  Which would also mean loss of a huge investment and not having cows bred --HUGE RISK!  The benefits of having a bull are that cows are getting bred -hopefully- without any real work on your part.  Also, if he misses one or one doesn't stick he will get her next time around.  The overall successful breeding rate of bulls vs. AI is much greater.

 

With all of this in mind and our AI trial last year,and only having 1 calf, we decided to purchase a bull.  We bought a 4 yr old from a local farmer who rotates the 4 yr olds out to the sale barn.  Since we only wanted him for a couple months --I do not want to worry about having a bull who is not as tame as our cows in the pasture any longer than I have to!-- this would work great.  He is a full blood angus and looks amazing.  He has a couple curved front toes that don't affect his breeding capability at all and is the reason he will be going to the sale barn in a couple weeks.  Our hope is to make back most of our investment and come out no worse than we were financially and have pregnant cows to boot!

That is the plan and hopefully all works out well for us.  I pray every day that he doesn't get hurt.  We haven't had any issues with aggression or attitude.  He simply would just as soon be away from us and us from him.  He seems pretty gentle, but as I told the kids a thousand times "you just don't know for sure and cannot trust him".  Soon I am going to schedule the vet to come out and preg check the cows so we know where we stand and how soon we can sell him.  I haven't seen him on anyone this cycle so I am hoping they are all bred with some cute little ones that I can enjoy next spring.  It gives me something to look forward to all long gloomy winter!

Make sure to make today a great day!!!

Our First Artificially Inseminated Calf

On May 31, our first AI calf was born!! He is a well built bull calf.  Officially he is 1/2 Hereford, 1/4 Angus and 1/4 Maine anjou.  His momma always has nice calves!  This was our first attempt at AI and our first time breeding with herefords.  I love the way he turned out. 

We had 3 cows to breed last year and thought we would try our hand at artificially inseminating them.  It was a lot of work to line up the vet to come out for each stage of it, watch the cows for heat and then watch them after insemination for signs of heat in case it didn't take.  We had one first-time heifer that was done 2 times and never took, which I hear is pretty normal.  We also had another heifer that took and was preg-checked positive and lost it.  So, out of 3 cows inseminated this will be our only calf :(  I was really hoping for at least 2/3.  The cost was cheaper than buying a bull, but pretty expensive to only get 1 calf! 

I have decided to buy a bull for this year and hope he does his job!  For some reason I feel much better knowing there is a bull out there doing his job over and over if it doesn't take the first time or the second time.  We don't, however, want a bull to keep around all the time so he will probably get sold back and we will have a new one every year. 

This year we have 7 heifers and cows to be bred and I cannot wait for all the little ones next year!! 

I have tons of farm news to report and hopefully soon I can get it all on here!!  Life has just been so busy lately!

Fall Vet Visit to Preg Check Cows and Vaccinate

So, the vet came yesterday afternoon and first vaccinated and wormed the calves.  They were fairly easy to get into the chute since they had no idea what it was!  It always looks very medeival but doesn't hurt them.  Three calves down, two momma cows to go.

After the slightly unpleasant task of loading the first into the chute, which wasn't as hard as usual for any of them, the vet whips out this device, a probe hooked to glasses with a cord.  I asked what it was and he said "the ultrasound".  I had thought he was just going to palpate for the sac in the uterus.  Wrong!  I was so excited that he would actually see something.  After a couple of minutes he told us she was pregnant!!!  I made a "woo hoo" out loud and he chuckled at me.  He took off the video glasses and let me put them on.  Wow!  I could see it.  The next momma went exactly the same although he couldn't see the baby only the embryonic vessicle, which he said means she is pregnant!

So, for our first time trying artificial insemination we had 2 out of 3 take the first time.  That's not so bad.  This is also our first time using a hereford bull named Traditions from www.SelectSires.com -usually it's a angus bull from a local farmer. The 3rd heifer we probably won't have preg-checked.  If she is then she will calve about July 9, 2013 and if she isn't we will re-breed her at a later date.  I still haven't decided if we will AI next year or rent a bull.  There are pros and cons to each. 

A big thanks to such a wonderful vet that not only understands my excitement, but answers all my questions and offers tons of info and explanation to aid my learning.

Our little ones are about an inch long right now and hopefully they stay put!  We haven't ever had trouble maintaining a pregnancy, but he said it does happen.  At least we are out of the woods for super hot temps now.

Looking Forward- Cows and Babies

The anticipation of knowing whether or not my cows got bred is killing me!

We decided this year to AI the cows for the first time ever.  We accomplished this on August 23.  It has been a long 45+ days waiting til we could check them.  Tomorrow is finally the BIG DAY!  The vet will come in the afternoon and we will know within a couple minutes of loading each in the chute if they are pregnant or not.  If so, the calves will be due June 2, 2013.  We only have 2 to check as we had an unfortunate one that went back into heat a couple weeks ago. This was the first time heifer that we raised from a bottle calf.  She was re-bred on Sept. 29.  So hopefully that one takes for her.

I have tried to watch the cows like a hawk for signs of any heat in these two.  Unless I just missed it, they should be bred.  We will see how this goes tomorrow, but I am seriously thinking about renting a bull next year.  It has been a lot of waiting, watching and waiting again.  At least with a bull one can see the breeding happening! (Sounds wrong when I see it written, but yes, I like to watch!)

The vet will also be vaccinating/pouring this years' calves and the mommas. We have not been as diligent with vaccinating as we should be, but my goal is to improve from here forward.  

Calving is one of my favorite times of year.  The anticipation drives me even crazier then than now.  I am overly diligent with checking the cows multiple times daily when it gets close and my husband finds much humor in the fact that I know so much about what their rear ends look like in each stage!   

There it is!  I am super excited for tomorrow to get here and find out if we are pregnant or not!   

As always, HAVE A GREAT DAY!