Post by penka78 on Sept 16, 2007 21:29:41 GMT -5
My Irish Dexter cows, Maxine, Sioux, and Gusty, are all due this month. The wait started on the 9th, the earliest possible date.
Maxine calved first. She had no significant mucous, no humongous udder. I came up to the barn at 1 p.m. to milk Erin. Since she wasn't there, I brought Maxine some grain and put lotion on her udder. She was behaving as normal. Erin came up to the barn and I milked her. A couple of times, I heard Maxine "talking" softly in her part of the barn and thought to myself: "Hm?..."
After taking care of the milk, I checked on Maxine and noticed her tail was at half-cock. "Hmmm??...", thought I. I watched her for about 30 minutes during which she strained a few times without going to the bathroom, laid down once and "talked" some more.
"Aha!" thought I and went down to the house to get a glass of ice tea to keep me company during my watch. I spyed on her from atop of the round bales, stacked double high in the middle part of the barn.
It took may be and hour and a half. She kept laying down, getting up, sniffing around. The bag showd 2 or 3 times, going back in when she stood up. She finally settled down and pushed like she meant business, and the head came out, then the shoulders, then almost the rest. Maxine got up and happened to plop the calf out in a nice warm sunny spot. The bag didn't break till the calf fell out and she liked it right off. Within 10 min the calf was standing up and in about 30 he was trying to nurse. As you can see in the pics, Maxine's front teats "balloon" and so calf had no luck.
But all the running around allowed me to see that it was a heifer.
I wasn't able to milk the fronts till Justus, my husband, came back from riding horses. But by then, the calf had already suckled (within hour of birth) both rear quarters several times and was nice and plump in the middle.
Maxine calved first. She had no significant mucous, no humongous udder. I came up to the barn at 1 p.m. to milk Erin. Since she wasn't there, I brought Maxine some grain and put lotion on her udder. She was behaving as normal. Erin came up to the barn and I milked her. A couple of times, I heard Maxine "talking" softly in her part of the barn and thought to myself: "Hm?..."
After taking care of the milk, I checked on Maxine and noticed her tail was at half-cock. "Hmmm??...", thought I. I watched her for about 30 minutes during which she strained a few times without going to the bathroom, laid down once and "talked" some more.
"Aha!" thought I and went down to the house to get a glass of ice tea to keep me company during my watch. I spyed on her from atop of the round bales, stacked double high in the middle part of the barn.
It took may be and hour and a half. She kept laying down, getting up, sniffing around. The bag showd 2 or 3 times, going back in when she stood up. She finally settled down and pushed like she meant business, and the head came out, then the shoulders, then almost the rest. Maxine got up and happened to plop the calf out in a nice warm sunny spot. The bag didn't break till the calf fell out and she liked it right off. Within 10 min the calf was standing up and in about 30 he was trying to nurse. As you can see in the pics, Maxine's front teats "balloon" and so calf had no luck.
But all the running around allowed me to see that it was a heifer.
I wasn't able to milk the fronts till Justus, my husband, came back from riding horses. But by then, the calf had already suckled (within hour of birth) both rear quarters several times and was nice and plump in the middle.