Christmas Calves

This Christmas was shaping up to be much better than last year. Everyone was healthy and there weren’t any large concerns looming on the horizon. Sacha and I planned to do a little traveling to visit her extended family many of whom I had never met before and I was looking forward to a little rest and some good visiting.

On the 22^nd, the day after the solstice, there was a new calf in the field, the first of the year even though it technically wasn’t the new year yet. The new calf crop or cohort might be a little better description. A little investigation showed that it was Grapeleaf’s. She is getting earlier and earlier. She had the first calf of last year’s cohort on the 18^th of January 2014.

The calf seemed healthy and mom was minding it. The weather was going to be mild for a few days so I decided to let things be and not try to get them in the newly finished shed. The real problem with the weather and why I build the shed is if you get cold and wet. Cold, unless it is extreme doesn’t seem to be a problem and neither does wet as long as temperatures stay at least in the mid-40’s or so which is where they were supposed to be. I checked in on the calf the next few days in the morning on my way to work and at night while feeding and it seemed to be doing just fine.

On Christmas Eve I got off work an hour early so we could go to services at church where Sacha was going to play piano (quite admirably I might add) and get ready for our trip. We planned to leave at 5:00 a.m. Christmas morning.

As I was heading out to feed the cows, I noticed a new calf. The previous new calf had been black with a white face. This one was brown with a white face. This was a little disconcerting to me. I had heard some weather forecasts that called for snow or snow transitioning to rain in the next few days which could easily turn into fatal weather for a brand new calf.

None of the cows seemed to be paying this calf any particular attention. There is a heifer that has never had a calf before and I thought it might be her. Sometimes cows don’t have much of a mothering instinct but you don’t know this until they have their first calf. I checked the heifer. This calf was brand new, only a few hours old and still slimy with mucus. In this situation the afterbirth is usually still present in the cow. It wasn’t the new heifer. One by one I checked the other cows. Nothing. Then I checked Grapeleaf and, lo and behold, it was her. I looked a little closer and sure enough, Grapeleaf was paying a little more attention to this calf than the other cows.

I was fit to be tied. It looked like Grapeleaf had been attending to this calf. It was pretty much cleaned up and standing and walking around clumsily but pretty well for a newborn. My biggest worry for the moment was the weather. And I was on a time schedule. I didn’t have a lot of time to spend here this evening to keep an eye on the calf and we were leaving well before daylight the next day.

Finally I decided to try to get them in the calf shed. It was for just such an occasion that I had spent much of the spring and late fall building it. I put some hay in the shed and mom ran some water into a tub in the shed. Then I went out and grabbed the new calf. This was fairly easy. Most calves aren’t too mobile for a few days. I took it to the shed and laid it down on the hay.

Then I grabbed the older calf. The grabbing was fairly easy. The transport was another matter. The new calf had kicked and squirmed but it wasn’t too hard to control. This calf was quite a bit stronger and managed to kick me in the groin a few times. Fortunately these were glancing blows so they weren’t excruciatingly painful. However, my arms were aching by the time I got this squirming bundle to the shed.

I called a few times and all of the cows started after me at first but finally it was just Grapeleaf following me and her calf. I took the second calf into the shed and laid it down. Grapeleaf started in and I started to close the door, the shed was looking awfully small and cramped at this point, when she backed rapidly out. The calves followed. At least it appeared that the new calf was pretty vigorous. It easily followed Grapeleaf back to where the rest of the cows were feeding.

I hadn’t planned on having the wildest cow in the herd with two calves in the shed when I build the doors and I wasn’t very confident that they would hold Grapeleaf in if she really wanted out. And it looked like she really didn’t want to be in that shed.

I could have probably gotten them in the shed and reinforced the doors but I don’t know if that would have been all that helpful. If Grapeleaf got frantic, she would be liable to trample the calves. So there it was. I would have to chance it. The new calf would live or die and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. After all the hours I put into it, the calf shed was a failure, at least in this situation. My only consolation is that it might still be useful in the future for a calf born in bad weather to one of the cows that is a little calmer.

So we went on our trip. The weather remained mild and the new calf survived the first several days. By the time I saw it again on the 28^th, it was quite lively, running around and nursing vigorously. I had gotten lucky. At this point, both calves can probably withstand some pretty bad weather.

Some might see all of this as a Christmas blessing. I am a little more ambiguous. To my mind this is the inevitable outcome of me trying to do too many things and being stretched too thin to employ good animal husbandry practices. I would rather try to make my own luck rather than depend on blind luck.

I should be set up to separate the bull from the cows until I want them bred. And I should make sure the bull calves are banded so they become steers instead of young bulls that bring the cows into heat at inopportune times. Of course what is done is done and it isn’t any use whining and crying over spilt milk (especially since it hasn’t been spilt yet). I need to deal with the situation at hand and try to improve on it in the future. Time will tell if these events lead to good outcomes or not.

My concern at the moment, besides bad weather, is Grapeleaf and both calves getting enough nutrition. Grapeleaf has always been painfully skinny, even in the early summer when the grass is best. Now she has two calves to feed. She has had twins before, in 2008, and lost both of them when she contracted worms and I didn’t catch it soon enough. She wasn’t getting enough nutrients to make enough milk for her calves so she weaned them too early. This all happened when there was plenty of grass. Now there is no grass so I have to make sure Grapeleaf gets enough feed.

This time around Dreadlocks or “Miss D” actually lets the older calf nurse from her. It isn’t unheard of for a cow to adopt a calf. Miss D had her calf in August, and since I don’t have the means to separate the cows and calves for weaning (again poor husbandry practice), this calf has probably kept Miss D’s milk up. So maybe I got lucky again by not weaning Miss D’s calf, though it remains to be seen how Grapeleaf’s calf nursing from Miss D might affect Miss D’s calf for this year.

My plan is to supplement Grapeleaf with grain and I will start feeding more hay to make more calories available. This might mean that I run short on hay for this year and may have to buy some more. If it looks like the cows are wasting hay, I might dial it back to what I have been feeding. At any rate, I will probably be spending more for feed, hay and grain, this coming year.

If these calves and probably a few more that will be born in the coming year had been born in the spring with the grass coming on and the threat of bad weather mostly past, I wouldn’t have these worries. My time building the calf shed would have been better spent setting up a pen for the bull to separate him from the cows until May or June so they would calve in late March or early April. This way I wouldn’t have to worry about new calves being born in killing weather. Another hard lesson relearned. Hindsight is 20/20.

Grapeleaf and her two calves. The black one was born December 22nd and the brown one was born December 24th.  These are fraternal twins. In other words, they are from two separate eggs and each had its own placenta, making the live birth of the second one two days after the first possible. Grapeleaf looks pretty gaunt, as usual. Part of the afterbirth is visible, dragging on the ground by Grapeleaf's tail. This is how I knew the second calf belonged to Grapeleaf. I am not exactly sure of Grapeleaf's exact lineage but I think she may be descended from one of the Gold Dust Twins, twin cows we got when I was very young. 

Another view of Grapeleaf and calves again showing how gaunt Grapeleaf looks. As I said this is how she usually looks. To look at her before she had these calves, one would never dream that there was one, let alone two, calves inside her. 

                            

                                      Doing double duty nursing. 

Dreadlocks or "Miss D" helping out. 

Both calves are also already eating hay. It is not uncommon for calves to eat hay within the first several weeks of birth. This seems a little early to me. Hopefully they are not calorie stressed and I am just a worrying a bit too much.