One of the things I love about farm life is the cycle of life and events. Year after year, things are cyclical, repeatable, fairly consistent: breed cows, dry off cows, birth of calves, make sure calves are getting what they need, milk cows, move cows in and out of barn, move calves with and away from moms, etc. However, there are always those events that make you scratch your head and say “I didn’t see that coming!” or “WOW! How can we prevent THAT from happening again?” But for the most part, calving has been fairly uneventful. Some calves have arrived earlier than expected and some were a little later than we thought they would be but other than that, there really haven’t been any surprises…UNTIL TODAY!
Caramel (Mocha’s daughter, Jersey’s granddaughter, for those of you who have followed our farm for awhile) was due to calve tomorrow. We have been watching her, expecting her to calve early but even as recently as last night, I saw no signs of impending labor, other than she had “bagged up”, which basically means her milk was coming in. When Jeff went out to separate Hazel from Mocha at 6:00 this morning, he checked on Caramel and said “all was fine”. Imagine my surprise as I was pulling my milk cart to the barn to see a little black calf standing in the corral next to Caramel! But that was only the first of many exhausting surprises this morning!
I ran into the house to grab my camera to get some pictures of her, thinking she had just been born. When I returned with my camera, I realized she was already almost dry and was standing quite well on her own. Caramel was quite fussed though! Now, just to fill you in on an important detail, since we don’t milk Caramel, she doesn’t get the daily handling of coming in and out of the barn like our other bovine. She has been a bit of a loner, a little less social and a bit more skittery than the others, since the twin calves who would have been her buddies died when Heidi died in September of 2016.
Thinking we would protect Caramel and her calf by getting them into the barn where we could monitor her colostrum intake, apply iodine to her umbilical cord, etc., Micah picked up the calf and carried her with Caramel right beside them into Caramel’s stall. Well, first of all, in all of the six previous calves, I have NEVER heard a calf bellow like this one did! She was bellowing so very loud and constant. I think that kind of freaked Caramel out a little bit. When we got them into the stall, Caramel was quite agitated and the calf was running around and into the wall. At this point the 10×10 stall became much too small and dangerous for them. So we moved them back to the corral. Boy, were we ever in for a surprise!
The calf ran around the corral and then to my utter shock and astonishment, she climbed right through the electric fence into the side pasture. I don’t know whether she got shocked or not, but I am suspecting she did, because she took off, running faster than I have ever seen a newborn calf run, all the way up the side pasture, with Micah running after her!
Now, if you read my previous post about Hazel getting through the electric fence tape that separates the side pasture from the front pasture, you will recall that I criss-crossed it so that she couldn’t get through. Our second surprise came when she just barreled through that criss-crossed tape. Again, I don’t know if she got shocked or not, but she may have.
I thought once she got into the large front pasture, she would just stop from sheer exhaustion. But NO! She kept running and to my horror, she ran right through the front pasture fence, across the road and into the ditch and cornfield on the other side! Poor Micah! He has been sick with a bad cold but he just kept running after her! He finally caught up with her when she tripped and fell in the ditch on the other side of the road, right before heading into the cornfield! Had she made it that far, I don’t know how we would ever have found her! Micah caught her and kept her stationary while I ran back to the barn and grabbed a lead rope to put on her. I was so winded my chest hurt but I knew she would be tough to keep down for long, so I did my best to run back to Micah.
We got the lead rope on her and Micah carried her back across the road. He put her down in the grass so we could lead her back to the barn, because obviously no fence we have would keep her in! That little bull-headed heifer kicked and ran and tried to escape the entire way back to the barn. We settled her back into Caramel’s stall just to give her a chance to rest and calm down. She had to be exhausted!
In the meantime, this little rascal had upset every single bovine on our farm…from great-grandma Jersey to her grandma Mocha (who was waiting in the stall to be milked), to her aunt Truffle and her great-uncle Oreo! They couldn’t figure out what this little calf was doing outside of the fence and across the road!
Eventually, we got Caramel and her calf settled together in the barn in Jersey’s stall since it is a bit larger. They seem to be doing ok for now. Up until this calf, we have had the now-unfounded belief that the corral was a safe place for a new mama and her calf! Now we know better! I hope the craziness of her first few hours are all the drama we have for awhile. I am exhausted!
