Awww, Another Newbie

Well, big old Foolish had her calf. Who am I kidding though, she's two years and two months, so not really old. The baby is a very cute little Holstein-Jersey cross heifer. Unfortunatley as we are currently very over stocked she will probably end up being sold.

All in all though we had a very interesting morning. Saturday morning is traditionally my time off. I don't normally have to milk. But we are having some serious problems with Hooter, who calved the night of the final day of the Enterprise event. She got really bad mastitis in two quarters, and we have been having to treat her, with little result. And as a consequence she is a real bother to milk, so I am the one doing it. Which means I get up and milk her, every single milking. Fortunatley for me she is out of the tank, so I can wait until they are done Saturday morning, then go over and take care of her.

The interesting part was that Foolish started calving as Mom and I were leaving the barn. She was out in the yard with all the other cows, and it was only the two of us left at the stable. So we figured we could just split her off enough for me to get a halter on her, and move her over to the shed that we cleaned out yesterday, fill it up with straw, and let her have her baby.

Then, as I went to get said halter, Mom noticed that Takala, Lakota's Kenyon daughter from last May, was in a raging heat, and the older and much bigger cows were beating her right into the ground. So we had to try and catch her up too so they couldn't kill her. And from there it became a two person, fifty cow and heifer rodeo. Tak was all spooked up and skittish, so once I managed to get her pared off I drove her into the sawdust shed where we were going to put Fooolish, figuring she is an old show cow, so getting a halter on her shouldn't be too big an issue. Well, between her wanting to stay with the other cows, and being in the starts of labor, she was not feeling any need to let me near her. And then Tak jumped OUT of the sawdust shed.

After about an hour of me and mom trying to catch the two of them up, Alan and then Dad finally showed up and we were able to get them both settled in. Takala in a calf stall in the barn, and Foolish in the pen.

We literally went over to the house, I grabbed some toast and went back out to check on Foolish to see how she was doing, before Mom and I went to get some Black Locust saplings from a friend, and the baby was already there. What a morning!