Starting all over again

[regolith]

This is the *official* first calf of 2013.
We don't count the heifer that slipped a calf last winter (May/June) while the baby bulls were in the herd, and delivered a replacement calf in February.
Or the four autumn born heifer calves I bought in March to milk her through the winter after I'd dried the rest of the cows.
Or the heifer who slipped a calf at 6.5 months in May, but came into milk.
Or the young cow who slipped her calf 5 days after arrival on the new farm... but came into milk, and has been supplying my house milk for the last six weeks.

Nope. This time it's for real. 817 with a heifer calf born six days before her due date:

and several more cows looking close to dropping theirs too.

 

[Putangitangi]

Wherever you are has to be colder than where I am and here we've just had a nasty lot of rain and hail!

I don't calve until late September/October, when the grass starts growing again.

 

[regolith]

No hail, though the wind is rather rough.
The weather this last week has been dissuading doing most of what still needs done to set up for calving.

Difference in calving dates reflects the difference between beef and dairy more than climate I suspect - there's dairies tucked right under Mt Taranaki that don't start till late August but they'd have to be way colder than your farm.

 

[bird dog]

Do your cows always hang out on the road after calving? That would sure be convenient. I always have to go into the brush to find mine.
It looks like she standing there waiting for a ride... or maybe the feed truck.

 

[greybeard]

/\
First thing I thought too-- "Dang--their cows get their own paved road!"

 

[regolith]

they're dairy cows... of course they get their own road!

You want to try walking a grazing herd a mile to the dairy shed every day through bush and rough paddock?
She's actually standing on a bit of the bridge that's just been repaired - I didn't do that deliberately, it was the best angle I had for a photo. She just stopping to make sure her calf is keeping up.

 

[waihou]

Looks like a fine spell coming for the next week, just right for calving, hopefully it will dry the mud out a bit!
We started calving a week ago too, with a backwards, legs crossed 27kg bull-but dead. Four good ones since though, we're just a bit further south of you regolith I believe. Nice scenery!

 

[regolith]

I've just pulled a Jersey-sired calf out of a Jersey heifer. Thought the feet seemed a bit big. I could hardly lift him to get the pair of them back out on grass.
I want to see this critter in daylight!

I didn't see your post Waihou - have you had frosts? I can't remember a year when the weather has been so good during calving.
Your calves look great!
I'm back in Taranaki since the Manawatu farm sold. Think we just passed the halfway point of calving.

22/7 a calf turned up between 2pm and 4pm, still wet when I walked through the calving cows about 4:30 (I'd driven past about 4 and noticed a calf with different markings to the other four newborns). No mother in evidence. I left him behind for someone to claim when I took the other calved cows out, watched him in the middle of the night get up and walk through the herd looking for an udder that would feed him, lay down again hungry. Next day still no mother so I put him with the milkers, right beside the only one of those four cows who could have had him as a twin. She didn't recognise him. I'm still trying to find a reason for that calf's existence and at this point every cow who was due up to 17 days after that calf was born, has calved.
Neighbour didn't have any cows close by at the time. If he was a twin, his sister is one of my replacement heifers. I looked at the group yesterday and there's nothing to suggest she's a twin.

 

[regolith]

...and nearly finished. Twenty-something cows to go.

Weighed the Jersey bull calf next morning - 41 kg.
Still no answer to the orphan beyond concluding he was a twin to number 3's heifer.
Pulled a total of two calves so far, the Jersey bull and a cow with milk fever and not getting on with calving. Malpresentations to date - zero. Though I have found three stillbirths so it's possible some or all of those came backwards. That's out of 111 calved cows.

A few photos taken this calving:

Found this early on when there was still time to do a bit of fencing in between milking and checking cows

16 (in the middle) and two of the autumn-born calves she fed through winter

The calves do come off the cows eventually

heifer with edema before calving

last week

willows coming into leaf

pulled this calf out of the creek a few hours before taking the photo... long story

this evening. Trying to illustrate the difference in coat between the calf that gets an extra bottle at night because she doesn't drink her share in the morning, and the other calves. Can't be done in the half-dark: she's not in that image.

I forgot to put the photo on here of an unexpected heifer calf. I put an angus straw into my Simmental cross heifer last year, waited excitedly for my simangus calf and got... a Murray Grey? Without the diluter gene I guess it would have been a solid black calf. Sold the calf as a feeder, had plans to sell them as a pair but her udder is bad enough to make her look like hamburger so she's milking in the dairy herd again this year.

 

[regolith]

 

[inyati13]

Nice pictures. I like the landscape.

 

[bigbull338]

love looking at your cattle.

 

[J&D Cattle]

Beautiful scenery and cattle!

 

[Putangitangi]

So that's where you are! I could have waved on my way home from Wellington last week.