Happy Ending

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Here's my feel-good story for the day: Last year my 2014 bottle baby was a 1st calf heifer & had a uterine prolapse in the middle of the night. Fortunately I had just gone down to check, the vet was here within 30 minutes & she had a complete recovery (and also raised a very nice calf). There's always the possibility of problems breeding back after a uterine prolapse (if the cow even survives) but she settled the 2nd day after we turned out the bulls & it took her all of 20 minutes of labor to pop out a beautiful heifer - at 2:00 this morning. Yay! Additionally, I knew one of my fave 2010 cows was going to calve last night because she does the same thing every year: leaves the herd & comes up by the house, waiting for me to notice her. I give her extra cubes & she calves in the same place, about 30 yards from the house. And every year her mama (who's now 9) will find her, check out her new grandchild & hang with her progeny for most of the day. Always amazes me. Happy Spring calving, CT board!
 
True Grit Farms":183kf0lz said:
Glad it all worked out. But getting up to check on a cow in the middle of the night, isn't on my list of things to do.

Some times I'll sleep (and I use that term loosely) on a blow-up mattress in the workshop when we're calving out heifers. Night time checks have saved a mal-placed calf, a hard pull & the aforementioned prolapse so it's worth it to me. I drink a ridiculous amount of strong coffee :)
 
As long as you accept the losses that were perhaps preventable, you're quite free to not check on them... I'm batting 100% over the last 100 calves, and I'm going to do my darnedest to stretch that streak. Last year I might as well not have gotten up. every calf was born between 5am and 10 pm.
Good to hear it went well... I have a cow that's got 2 sons and 2 daughters... the other day all 5 of them were eating from the same bale of hay together... She still gives daily lickings to her youngest son (yearling). It's kinda neat to see.
 
TCRanch":3oo9ez5d said:
M-5":3oo9ez5d said:
Good deal.

BTW I thought this thread was about massage parlors from the title

Ha! But I actually do give most of my girls a massage-scratch combo; they love it. My husband is jealous ;-)

We should probably try and keep a better eye on what's going on. Maybe your husband needs to move to the workshop. Sounds like that's where the actions at.
I have lost a heifer and calf that I might of been able to l save in the last 10 years. But we breed for trouble free calving, but nothing is a 100%. We had to pull our first calf last year, and I know I shouldn't of said nothing.
 
I had a cow due with twins that I checked every few hours each night when I was home from college, never did anything... Day after my parents return home from vacation my dad notices she's getting close when he let the others outside for the day (we bring our heifers into the old dairy tie-stall at night) then he checked on her a few hours later to find her washing a pair of dead heifer calves... Later that afternoon one of the heifers at my grandma's place prolapsed... So now my cow is raising her calf, and she's recovering very rapidly but not missing her baby.
 
TG, I was worried about the Limo sired calves on the heifers last year.. borrowed a puller from a neighbor before I needed it (I did in fact NEED it), then bought my own... went 25 years with out one, but I'd rather spend the $200 and save the $2000 calf nowadays. I used my own puller on 1 more heifer.. was a 100 lb bull calf. This year the Limo didn't get any young stock to breed, I used my homeraised bull, and I have a lot more confidence in him.
 
Good luck with it Nesi, waiting to see what kind of calf a new bull throws is stressful. And a crossbred bull with no history on heifers....better you than me. I bought a puller when we went with a Simi bull and never needed it, and hopefully you won't need yours.
 

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