Wow! I am so sorry that it has been a while since I have
blogged. Time sure does get away from me quickly. Since I have last blogged,
things have kind of blown up and gone crazy around here. That’s right, its
calving season (though the weather sure doesn’t feel like it)!
I went up to Eagle Creek again on the 17th of
March to help clean pens and do other busy work. In the morning I got to pull a
calf that had a leg back. I had never gotten to do this before! Boy, those heifers have small little
pelvises. Even my little arms were tired and swollen after I had gotten things
the right way in there. To add to all of our trouble, the calf ended up
weighing 96 lbs. That’s a big guy for a heifer! Anyways, so I reached in there and
had to push him back in there and then grab his ankle and PULL. I finally got
it. Then I needed help to get him all the way out. When he came out, we went to
work on him, tickling his nose so that he would sneeze and cough up all that
slimy stuff. He wasn’t breathing but his heart was beating so Rusty (guy in
charge at Eagle Creek) starting doing CPR on the calf. That’s right, C.P.R.! You gotta close his mouth and cover up one nostril while
blowing into the other one until you see his stomach rise. Its pretty amazing
to see actually. This went on for about 3 minutes and the calf barely started
to breathe on its own. We worked on it and worked on it and tried and tried but
we just couldn’t get him going and he went to greener pastures. But don’t be
too sad! The night before I was there, they did the same thing to another calf.
They worked on it for 10 minutes with just its heart breathing until it finally
came around! Seriously, when I got there in the morning it looked like a normal
calf. Once he got up and moving around though you could tell he was missing a
few brain cells from the lack of oxygen. He was just a little…slow. They called
him “The Miracle Baby”. To make up for
the lost calf, we took one that had been orphaned, rubbed it all over with
mommie’s “juices” and then rubbed it some more, and then put the cow and the
calf in the same pen together. Wha-la! Mommie likes the baby but baby is too
PO-ed at us because we threw him on the
ground and rubbed slimey stuff all over him to drink any milk. Pretty comical
to see a calf that sits there and pouts cause he’s mad.
Then I got to doctor a heifer who had a retained placenta.
She hadn’t cleaned yet (gotten rid of all of her afterbirth) so that generally
means infection. What I did was put on a
very big glove, took the end of the hose (attached to the bucket), and put it
as far in her uterus as I could, and then pump this water with medicine in it
in there to flush things out. Then we gave her two shots and 4 huge HUGE pills.
Hopefully it cleared things up.
The afternoon was full of more pen cleaning. Right around 5
o’clock is when things got interesting. I was busy suckling a calf (its mother
was in the chute and I was helping it suck). Ross (field rider) brings in
another heifer that has a foot back and Jolly Holly from Florida takes care of
it. Immeadiately after, he brings in another one. We get her in, get the chains
on the feet and start pulling. When his feet wouldn’t pop out, we knew that
this big baby was coming out in a different way. Mass chaos starts as everybody
gets ready for a C-section. We got her turned upside down, shaved, washed, and
cut open and the baby is fine! While Todd is stitching up the belly, Rusty
pulls me aside and asks me to get the chains and lube and the wash bucket. We
are going to pull one in the pen because the chute is still being used. So
Rusty ropes the cow and gets her so she will stand there. He then gets the feet
on the chains (I guess it’s the chains on the feet) and starts pulling. He
quickly deduces that its time for another C-section. Two in a row!! So what I
thought was mass chaos before was really only minor chaos because now its time
for mass chaos when there are two in a row! The end result was two healthy
unstressed babies, two loopy mommies, and 6 hungry calvers.
We finally got up
to the house around 7:30 to eat.
Shortly thereafter, calving started down at the Whitcraft.
(that’s where I live) I’ve run out of time but I promise I will blog again
soon!
Happy Trails!
P.S. There are benefits to waking up early. Here is a view of the sunrise over the Bear Paw Mountains. I got to see this view every morning for almost 2 weeks.
