Baby!!!

Mingo had her calf today, March 30. We had been waiting, each night proclaiming that the time was at hand. Finally she went into labor and produced the baby in less than an hour. I thought that she was due the end of February but I was only off by a month! Ironic then, that I won the baby pool within 5 minutes. I guessed March 30 at 5:00 p.m. and Mingo's calf was born at 4:55. The baby is a beautiful chocolate brown. Mother and baby are in the barn in a roomy box stall. I called Darrel, the former owner for some pointers of dealing with a new mom. It is nice that this time she will be able to keep her calf at her side. We will try letting the calf drink and milking her too. Right now her udder is so big, it might have milk for the whole town. Milk fever is something you have to watch in new bovine mothers and sheep too. When too much calcium goes into their milk production, the muscles don't have enough and they can get stiff to the point of not being able to move. You can avoid this by not stimulating milk production with rich food and not milking her out all the way. I will try this and keep a close eye on her.

What a fine Udder

Mingo, my 11 year old jersey cow is going to freshen, or give birth very soon. She is due according to her breeding date around March 8. Each day her udder has been growing and filling. This is called "bagging up." I expect it to fill out more until she begins to drip a little milk and then I will really watch her closely. Being on baby alert is nice because it gets you out of bed in the middle of the night. Sounds crazy I know, but the stars are really vivid around 2:00 a.m. and I feel very peaceful heading out to the barn to check on things. I have learned a lot since I came to Wisconsin in 1981. I didn't know any terms for cow pregnancy like "freshen", "springing" or "bagging up". One day Gary Faulkner, whose farm I was visiting for the summer, told me to go out and see if any of the cows were "pulling". Not wanting to seem ignorant, I decided to go out and see if any of the cows was pulling anything. I looked. They were all standing around like normal. I didn't see any pulling. I ducked back into the barn and reported that all was quiet. Gary stuck his head out of the door and saw one of the heifers mounting another one who stood still and waited. "Well there's one bulling right now," he said. Oh, BULLING. Thus began my education about cows calving and just one of the many terms that I would become so familiar with.