First calf spring 2011

[regolith]

is a tiny Jersey heifer to this cow:
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=58847

but calving can't start yet... I haven't even got all the furniture remantled since shifting here.

A good start to calving, of course, is visiting the herd and spotting a newborn calf struggling to its feet and heading for the nearest udder.

Not this year. Yesterday morning I spotted a scrap of membrane with a bit of fluid in it on the ground - there's a couple of cows ready to calve in the other herd, but nothing closer than a couple of weeks away in this paddock. No placenta, no calf and no cow trying to eat my dog. Ah well, an eaten placenta and hiding calf is better than a dead one in full sight - but I doubted it.
Now the problem with Jersey cows in calf to Jersey is that they can spit them out and then present you with a tail and rear just as clean as it was before they started calving. So I figured if a calf didn't turn up, either a cow would spring very quickly (if she was late term) or in three - four weeks she'd be bulling & probably I'd have noticed the hollow in her side before then.
Worst case scenario is a cow that has started calving and hasn't completed the job.
No sign of any cow calving by yesterday evening, then this morning I turned up and - a-ha, 258 has developed a fully sprung udder overnight.
By afternoon I'd decided I was going to walk her back to the shed and check whether she still had a calf in her. Went to get her an hour before dark - and there she was cleaning off a newborn calf.
I had some colostrum in the freezer and went back to feed it three hours later. Although I'd seen her struggling to rise when she could only have been minutes old, she hadn't stood up and still couldn't maintain balance when I left again. It's a mild night - she's probably well under 20 kg but I think she'll be fine till morning. That calf in the other thread was premature as well, and is now in the herd expecting her first calf.

And now the only question is - did 258 drop out that piece of membrane 30 hours before the calf? Or was that someone else altogether?

 

[rodderz]

Ahhh spring time... I hate those did she/didn't she ones. Seems every year we have one or two. All you can really do is watch them and see if anyone bags up and starts dripping milk. Good luck!

 

[Nesikep]

Man, I was thinking "first spring calf of 2011".. that's mighty late... until I saw you're on the other side of the world.. good luck with the rest of the season!

 

[regolith]

Second calf arrived last night... and I check the weather forecast hoping for less rain and there's a severe weather warning, just what we like!

The little heifer was dead when I got back to it the next day. This one's better - a strong Jersey bull, had a full belly and was dancing around at first light. I've put the close cows right next to the house so I can see (and hear) what's going on.

 

[regolith]

So is he fat enough yet?

He's been lying in the long grass all day and when I went out just before dark to look at the group he'd just fed. That's not his mother standing alongside - didn't get good photos of her because it was too dark.

 

[regolith]

So when is it going to stop raining? The storms/downpours seem to have been playing around forever with no end in sight.
Four cows milking now, one nice black heifer calf tagged (3/4 Friesian 1/4 Jersey). Things'll pick up speed round about the twentieth of the month.

 

[waihou]

I sympathise with the weather regolith, we're in the same boat/country!
Mud for miles, cold lashing wind and rain, with hail and thunderstorms. All calves safely tucked inside-not due to start until 20th-fingers crossed!
Nice strong looking bull calf-and you've got grass for him to walk on!

 

[regolith]

Looks like a whole bunch of cows just waited for the rain to stop - 5 calves in the last 48 hours, nine cows altogether calved now.

21 had the first calf 2008 and 2009 and was due near the end of the calving season in 2010. I'd been watching her for ages - since late June, probably, and decided to cut her out with the first lot of springing cows even though I knew she'd been on a late calving farm last year and couldn't posssibly be due any earlier than August.
She calved yesterday. Exactly three weeks early. Yup, the calf is obviously premature but she's okay - I've brought her into the shed to feed because I hadn't seen her effectively suckling, though she was certainly pointing her head in the right direction. She's got that real soft fluffy coat of early calves.

There's a heifer's heifer calf in the paddock with gray eyes - instead of the usual deep blue or black.

 

[alisonb]

Good luck with your calving season Rego, keep up with the pics - I always find it interesting to see what 'crosses' pop out of you cows

 

[regolith]

The calf with the gray eyes:

The action's all stopped here - haven't seen a new calf since the hours of dark yesterday morning. I'm bored already.
So when do you think she'll calve?

One that has calved:

I had a big mob of calves less than two weeks old all eating grass this morning when I let the group through onto their new break (??)
The babies will be brought in once I've got enough cows calved to start supplying milk to the factory... I'm just trying to pretend I haven't read all the stuff that says they have to be immediately whisked off to a warm dry shed, tubed with colostrum and deprived of grass lest it composts in their stomach.

Calved heifers are behaving well at milking time. The one in the picture above isn't 'blind' in the front left teat because I can get a few drops of milk from it - but it feels blind, like there's a rope sitting inside it, and she doesn't milk out properly on it. I suspect she's good as three-quartered.
I've got another with a huge udder that the teats swell up so she can't milk out fully, normally time and maybe a shot of oxytocin sorts that problem. Some folks would say heifers should be fed less pre-calving to prevent that.
"Well" is a relative term - the 08 heifers' behaviour was a total embarassment to me last year. These ones are better.

 

[rodderz]

Regarding the blind quarter, I had one very similar a few years ago. Felt something hard in the teat canal and could only get a few drops of milk out. I mentioned it to an "old timer" who told me it might be a calcium build-up in the teat canal. His solution is to get two pens(I know, I know) and run them down the teat whilst squeezing it. Well I tried it and bugger me if it didn't work! It took a couple of goes and yes, you have to be careful not to damage the teat. But it seemed to break up the calcium a bit and squeeze it out the teat. Might be worth a try.

 

[regolith]

That's a good idea, thanks Rodderz.
I had a five year old cow calve develop a teat pea a couple of years ago and the vet dilated the teat canal and removed it, and put her on antibiotics. And I have to say, this feels similar, as if it might be a 'pea' blocking it.
The thing is, with this farm if I use antibiotics the cow is out of the herd and in a quarantine paddock for three weeks, so I didn't want to go that route.
Did you have to leg-rope/restrain the cow to do that? She hasn't much appreciated my attempts to get milk out of that quarter.

How's your grass going? I've ordered PKE, don't think there's any way I could get through the spring without. There was reasonable grass cover on this farm when I arrived but no hay or silage.

 

[regolith]

Oh, now this is pleasant...

The farm owner called me yesterday afternoon while I was on the internet, told me there was snow to 200 meters coming and I should move the cows. I'm like, what? I've literally only just clicked away from the metservice website and it says cold rain. Told him the cows'll be fine, there's no grass in the paddock he suggests and I'll check them, bring the calves in if they're suffering. Walked round them at 2 am and the air was warm and all content.

This morning there's snow low on the ranges and the JSwap truck driver tells me he's never seen snow as low as this. I don't think any of it reached the farm.
I've just checked the metservice site - snow down to 200 metres, clearing this afternoon is today's summary.

Do they determine and post the forecast *after* the fact??

 

[rodderz]

No I didn't have to leg-rope her, she was fairly quiet. Grass cover is ok, it's a very wet farm and we struggle this time of year for feed at times. I am due to do a pasture walk but it will be around 2100, I am guessing. We were a bit light on supplements this year, but the favorable weather earlier on meant we were grass only for a good while. We will start feeding PKE soon as well. We don't start calving officially until August 1st, but have had 5 or 6 calve already. We also feed Proliq through most of the season.
Regarding the weather, I have lived and worked in this area most of my life. It is normal every 3 or 4 years to have a light sleet or snow in really cold conditions. It normally melts away almost immediately. This morning when I got up we had a good 3 or 4 inches of snow! A lot of it is still lying there tonight. Very tough on the cows, both mobs had shelter thank goodness. My kids thought it was pretty cool though.

 

[regolith]

This snow was pretty much gone by afternoon:

Mud is on the neighbour's - they're feeding crop. I'm glad it didn't snow here. We had snow where I was sharemilking in October 2009 and it knocked the cows' production back for a while - they hated it.
It's warm and as calm as can be out there again, light frost. Wonder if it's a middle of the night thing that all the weather stops and the air warms up?

This cow made me smile. I thought she was never going to get up again, the way she was behaving this evening - refusing food and water, wouldn't stand with the hip lifters, obviously dehydrated & cold and apparently completely out of her mind.

I think I heard her before I saw her *note to self*: get a new cow coat.

She didn't even squash her PKE and water. That water bucket is still full - what's up with the cow that she can climb to her feet and wander off but won't touch the water? She wasn't grazing either, when I saw her.

As if that wasn't enough to worry about... 361 ('Ms Ox' pictured above) I was expecting would have a calf by nightfall. She's started leaking milk, tail hoisted just a little, mothering calves, was out of the herd after milking checking out the area where two calves had been born the previous night. She was at the gate when I went to check them just now and I was tempted to let her through before walking round the herd so I didn't have to chase her if I wanted to get her out - but there's nothing to see. As far as I can tell, she hasn't started calving yet.
Ah well, heifers can sometimes change their behaviour even a day or two days before calving. It'll be years since I've seen one go longer than 24 hours after starting to leak milk.

 

[waihou]

And here is another NZ spring 2011 calf!

Thank goodness the mud has dried up a bit, even though we had a bit of snow fall around here on Monday-which is a rarity this close to sea level (about 100ft) in this area of the North Island NZ. Calving started 2 days ago, with a big,dead bull calf no apparent reason, perhaps he was backwards and drowned before his head was out. So this heifer is officially our first calf for the season. The cow is a pure bred Murray Grey, 2006 born. She has had 4 calves, all heifers. She calved on 21st September last year, 311 days ago and this heifer was a 284 day pregnancy so she has come forward 9 weeks. Havn't weighed her yet but I imagine she will be around 37kgs (84lbs.?)

 

[regolith]

I like those cows that keep having heifers.

The mud doesn't look bad at all.

 

[waihou]

No mud because I let the springers get up on the hill, but I can assure you there is still a bit around!

A few heifers are fine, but when the main focus is breeding low birth weight bulls for dairy farmers to mate their heifers, it can be frustrating to get too many heifer calves-we had 19 heifers out of 35 born last year, but one of them was a free martin twin!
Weighed this girl this morning, 36kgs, so was 1kg out in my guesstimate!

Note the cow is closely watching the weighing and tagging procedure. My cows don't stay unless I can weigh their calves out in the paddock in front of them without any agression!

 

[regolith]

So now that they've started, did they all come at once?

I found four new calves and one calving in the springers this morning. Two in the late mob decking the effluent paddock (supposedly cows not at risk of milk fever or catching mastitis) - oops. One in the main dry mob - and not the one I expected either.
Cut 22 cows into a milking mob on Thursday (after kidnapping their calves), leaving nothing calved at all in the springer group because there'd been a couple of days with no calves. Now there's eighteen in there. Since 5 July the average was a fraction over one calf a day.

What do you do with paddocks that look like that? The paddock my dry cows grazed through the worst storms I've designated for turnips this summer, but because the pasture needs renewed not because it was badly pugged (just isolated bits, most of the grass has sprung straight back up). The smaller groups - springers/calved cows and the late mob didn't make significant mud.

Why don't heifers take them pre-birthing classes? The one that was calving this morning - well, she was disturbed of course, because although I tried to leave her behind with the new-calved cows she must have sneaked out the gate with the group, which meant standing around at the milking shed for the better part of an hour if not longer - then of course, when I get up to the paddock after cleaning up the milking shed there's feet showing and she's running around trying to mother all the new calves and I let the herd through onto fresh grass so now she's concentrating on eating as well as chasing two calves at once.
Checked in on her in the early afternoon. She was sitting up against the fence, under the trees. I could see most of the calf and thought she at least had head and shoulders out but it might need a pull. Well, she got up as I approached and I straightened the calf out but it was too late, first dead calf since those two premature ones at the start. She'd calved right up against the fence, the calf had folded back over on its head as she pushed it out and that's how I found them, she hadn't got up since birthing it.
Too many times you see first calvers just lying around after calving - I've seen a few dead calves that could have been saved if the heifer had just stood up, turned round and pulled the membranes off the calf's nose. Or in this case, got up and down a few more times instead of sitting there calving right up against a fence.

A couple of 50% Brown Swiss heifers calved today and those are huge calves.

 

[waihou]

We've only got 32 to calve altogether, one 2yr old aborted at the begining of june, soon after we trucked them back from the run off for TB testing, then the first to calve (we were due to start officially from 24th July) lost her bull calf so this is the first live one. So 3 down, 29 to go!

They are all naturally mated to 3 different bulls-so due dates are only approx. if I saw any action 9 mths ago. I expect they will be mostly during August, though the 5 heifers are due late Aug/early Sept and I will be moving them up to a paddock near the house so I can keep an eye on them-for just the reasons you mentioned! I wondered if I lost the bull with his head tucked under, but his mother has had 3 calves so she should have known better! I just think he might have been a hard push and possibly backwards and drowned, he weighed 47kgs.

"What do you do with paddocks that look like that?"

We just hope the grass recovers, but actually we have put down pads of 'rotten rock' where the feeders are, just inside the gateways, to limit the mud-the ground is pretty free draining river bed at about 20cms below the surface.
We only have 50 acres and run the 30+ cows through the winter, but also have 13 bulls on he area too, and 14 yearling heifers up at a 20 acre run-off block-away from the bulls!