Difficult Calf Birth

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So, this is my first attempt at a video for this site! Yay!  It's not the best video I have ever seen, but hopefully it will be useful in identifying a difficult birth and what to do about it in a timely manner.  On the video, which was filmed over about 2.5 hours and sped up a bit, first you can see her up and down, some runny goo coming out when she pushes, her laying down to push, hooves showing and finally the chains being applied.

Friday night our cow that has had the trouble with bloat went into labor -finally.  She was progressing kind of slowly and got to the point we could see hooves sticking out and a tongue when she pushed.  She didn't progress past this point for 30 minutes when we decided it should be pulled.  When we got up close, the hooves were huge and so was the nose we could see when we opened it up a bit.  He put the hand puller chains on it and gave a couple good pulls.  Nothing.  We made a quick call to a farmer friend who quickly brought the ob puller over.  Within minutes and a couple strong men's pulls, we had a calf!

At first it wasn't breathing well and we were pretty worried about it.  We rubbed and rubbed to stimulate him and after a few minutes momma came over to start her momma duties on him.  Finally he started to perk up and breath without the scary gurgle noise.  He didn't get up that night, but we weren't too worried due to the difficult birth for both them.

The next morning he was up at times and has eaten.  Both he and momma are doing very well.  He is red with a white face and yes he is huge! He is 1/2 hereford and 1/2 south devon.  He's adorable and very mild mannered at least for now!!

Cattle Bloat

With our small herd of cows we have been extremely lucky so far and never experienced any of them bloat.  That being said, I have yet to "see" bloat and am naive in recognizing it --until now, that is.  I have read enough, though, that I thought I would be able to at least suspect it.  

A couple days ago one of our pregnant heifers looked bigger to me.  This happened over a couple days and she is very pregnant -due any time.  I debated that day what was going on and bloat did cross my mind, but she was acting fine so I thought I was just overreacting.  When I checked on her since then she looked the same and still acted normal.  

Tonight, I had my son and husband take a look at her and, yep, sure enough they diagnosed bloat.  She had a slight hump to her mid-back and her left side was much larger than the right.  This happened to her once before when she unknowingly stole another cows alfalfa hay at the county fair.  I wasn't there, so I didn't see it.  The boys said it was much worse last time with her belly hard as a rock.  Tonight the top of her belly was slightly firm and tight, but not rock hard.  

She is such a great tempered tame cow that she allowed my son to put in an orogastric tube while haltered and tied in the barn.  She definitely did not like it, but tolerated it.  Some of the gas did escape through the tube before she expelled the tube.  She also got a dose of mineral oil, which she found less than tasty.  She is now stalled in the barn and feed is on hold until her belly goes down a little more.  She is belching some nasty smelling gas which makes us very happy!  Hopefully she will be feeling better soon and have a beautiful calf for us in the next few days.   

My lesson is learned -if I suspect something isn't right, I should follow my instincts.  Now I also know what to look for to recognize bloat.  We will be keeping her on less lush pasture from now on. I am so thankful we didn't lose her due to my lack of knowledge!  

Udderly Enormous!

All the girls were up in the barn lot tonight so my daughter and I decided to go out and check on them.  We have a heifer, Red, that is due in a couple weeks with her first calf, but she has really been bagging up recently. I am so excited to see what her babies will look like since she is built like a brick, well, you know the rest.  When we looked at her tonight all I could do is feel sorry for her as it must be so uncomfortable, but this is what we saw:

This photo taken with my phone doesn't quite do it justice but believe me she is gigantic!  I think if she doesn't calve tomorrow I will start taking bets on when it will be or if it will be before she has an udder explosion!!

On a cute note, I got some decent photos of my little girl (she might become my favorite) in the barn lot. I love to look out in the pasture to see her playing in the field by momma.  She is just the meaning of adorable!

Love this girl!

Hope everyone has a wonderful day and I will post as soon as our next little beauty is born!

Long Awaited Arrival

It is days like today that make all the hard work and money spent all worthwhile.  It seems like I have been waiting forever to see our first new arrivals of the year (pretty much since the bull was here) and we are calving much earlier this year than any previous year.  

I have been keeping a close eye on the cows out in the pasture with binoculars from the house when busy doing housework and everything else.  Today after lunch I noticed the cows were within sight so I whipped out the binoculars to check on them.  To my shock and amazement there it was, a little black white faced calf running about near it's mother, Maria.  Yep, Maria was the first to calve and a first time mom who did it all by herself without a hitch.  What a tremendous calf she has(as I believe they all are).

Of course, I headed out to check it out and snap some pics of it.  We still cannot tell for sure if it is a heifer or bull calf, although my husband thinks she's a girl and I sure hope so.  If so, she will definitely be a keeper!

I then had to go into town to get our weekly ration of feed for the goats and chickens.  Driving by the field on my way home I noticed Mabel was in the corner of the pasture again as she was when I was out earlier.  I had checked on her then with no signs of labor.  She was now standing kinda funny with her tail straight out, but she wasn't eliminating anything.  I just had a feeling she was maybe in labor.  I ran in the house, grabbed the camera and my phone and headed back out determined to see the whole thing.  I did get to see it and it was an amazing hour.  I got lots of pics of the whole thing, some of which I will be posting maybe tomorrow in a "step by step of labor post".  The end product is a beautiful little boy that is as black as night and also oh so wonderful.  

Mabel is a wonderful momma and let us pet him this evening.  What an experience that was.  She is an amazingly gentle cow who is one of my favorites if not the favorite as far as temperament.

We still have 3 to go and each is sure to be as amazing as the others! My son also has a heifer to calve.  With all the events of today, one never knows what tomorrow might hold!

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!!  

Photos of Babies and Big Girls

I took these photos the other day out in the barn.  I love taking pics of them and the big girls. They are such characters! Finally the weather is bearable enough for me to get out and do this.

 One of triplets -whether

 Mistletoe peaking

 Twin buck - I love his color!  We will probably whether him so that one of our kids can show him at the fair.

 Triplets that are being bottle-fed.

 Twin doe -little sister to the buck with all that color!

 Our big billy and the producer of all that color.

 Heifer named "Big Red". She is built like a tank and will be calving in a few weeks!

 "Mabel" was our first baby cow born here and will be one of the first cows to calve in early April. This will be her second calf.

"Snowflake" likes to rub on everything!  She is not bred this year, but will be for next year.

This is "Maria". She is a first timer at calving this year also. She is a polled hereford that is a little standoffish still, but she is getting better.

There you have it, our first photo shoot for 2014! There will be lots more photos to enjoy throughout the year.  Hopefully we will have calves to take photos of soon!

Oh yeah and all photos ARE copywrited! If you chose to use one, anyway please include a link back to this page!  Thanks!

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. 

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!