regolith
Well-known member
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?
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?