Calving

Went out to check last night before dark, fixed a little fence and then drove around the cows.. had several new ones.. one was one of Chance and Hopes and had twins.. she really only seemed interested in one, so went back and told them about it, formulated a pan… I saddled a horse and Chance and Hope drove out to get the calves, we were going to bring them all in so both calves got colostrum .. when we got there I decided maybe we ought to just take the one who had obviously sucked and leave the other, so we did and Mama seemed to like her one baby but was puzzled, he was a little crippled in the front legs from being squished in there with his twin… brought the calf home, they fed it some more milk.. fast forward to this morning. Cindy went out with me to check and found that that twin wasn’t going to work, wasn’t even sure if he had sucked because of the front legs, tho’ he was with his mama and she liked him.. found a calf with no mother and trying to suck what ever cow was around him.. obviously he was kicked off and his mama had granny’ed somebody elses calf, loaded him up and brought him in and told Chance about it, so he saddled up, we drove back out, figured out which cow was grannying and started the two cows and one calf toward the barn, here come Chance on Beaver and they got them and put them in the shed… proceeded to rope the cow and tie her to the wall and get the calf sucking, gave her a little rompum and some oxy to make her mothering instinct kick in and let the milk down, the rompum to make her sleepy… got the calf to suck, but it was a job, he is big, she is short and a low bag so it was hard for him to figure out how to get his head low enough to grab a tit… we ended by hobbling her and leaving them together… I took the first twin back out and laid him by the other twin, grabbed the crippled one and put him in the outfit and we headed back.. Hope fed him some milk and I guess he is a bum for now… this weather that came thru’ seems to make cows stupid and you get grannying.. even out in a larger pasture.. cold and damp this morning, fog came rolling in and now it’s about gone, had a lot of frost on the grass this morning… glad we moved the cows off the old hay fields yesterday where there is some alfalfa as that can cause bloat pretty bad… grass is growing but seems slow, like it does every year at this time.. we need some sunshine and warm rains.. but then, we always do!