The Good Ole V-Day...Bull.

By now all the Valentine’s Day candy has been ate, the flowers have died and life is back to the grind. Another holiday down and I could not be more thankful. I am not one of those big holiday people. I do not enjoy Valentine's Day at all. Even though I have one, my heart goes out to those that do not and I can remember when I was that single girl and hated the holiday even more. Luckily for me, the whole love thing grows in my heart every time a new calf is born cause who can’t resist the sweet face of a little baby calf? It just got me thinking about the change that came that first Valentine’s Day with my hubs. The one where I asked that we do not celebrate it cause shouldn’t we celebrate our love every day? Yeah. I asked him to keep it pretty simple. So we did and still do very minimal celebrating goes on for the love day but we still show it every day and take the time to go out on "dates" when we can.

Now....

This is my love. Finding a new baby calf early in the morning and showering it with love and care. Meet Miss Little Red (for now, until I think of a good name anyway) 

I found her not long after she had been born, her momma #19 did a good job and cleaned her up for the most part but had her in a bad spot. She was shivering cold and needed dried off a bit more. So for the first time in over a year (usually hubs or dad are around for this part, but it was just me this morning) I picked her up and carried her into our bulk tank room. There I placed her in front of the heater and on some used feed sacks so the concrete wouldn't be so cold. I took some towels and rubbed her down and used a hair dryer to warm her up and dry her off. She was a good calf and just laid there for me after having bawled as I carried her causing every cow to become momma cow and follow me up to the barn bawling back... Quite the chatter this morning! 

Finally she was cleaned up for the most part and by then my dad had showed up to help me with the milking. I placed a calf coat on her and went back to milking. I milked her momma to get her that nice good colostrum that every baby needs. She was a happy camper for sure and I was happy for her but had to go on and finish my chores instead of just sitting there and playing with her all morning. Work must be finished and my other R&Ws would probably get pretty jealous of me not paying attention to them. 

My dad and I were thrilled to see she was a Red and White Holstein. We purchased a R&W bull last spring and hoped we would get some out of him even though we don't have many R&W cows. Well #19 is not a R&W, she is black and white so we were beyond thrilled to see Little Red. I, however, do not like Red Bull. He is a typical Holstein bull. If you have never been warned here it is, stay clear of Holstein bulls as much as possible. I don't know why but they get pretty feisty and are not so friendly after a while. Now that is not true of all Holstein bulls, we have had bulls that we can pet and our just little sweeties. Red Bull and I have a day to day relationship. Some days he just watches me and leaves me alone to get the cows in and other days he is kicking up dirt, hollering and following me or stirring up the cows and being a pain in the bull. My dad usually gets to get the cows in on those days cause he just doesn't mess with the man in charge. Men. Hmmph. 

Unfortunately, dealing with cold calves and feisty bulls are just part of the job description. A job I wouldn't change for anything. Just sometimes you wish others could understand all that goes into being any type of farmer and how big our hearts are full of love. 

My love for my cows and job goes on twice a day every day. My cows see love every time they are milked, fed or just go out to check on them. My favorite part of the day is petting my cows Annabel and Pineapple. They are my red and whites, my prize and joy, and now this sweet little girl... Even though she looks too much like the bull! 

Until next time,

The Milkmaid

P.S. - no sweet resolution update 50 days strong! 100 more to go! 

The Scandalous Cow and The Tale of Two Calves

Boy, do I have a story for YOU.

We had quite the uproar a couple weeks ago on the farm. Before milking my dad went out to check on the cows before we brought them up into the holding pen. Well while I was finishing up washing the equipment he showed back up with some news.

He simply said, “Deanna, we may have a problem… “

Meet Three Teat.

Three Teat got her name because she only has three functioning teats. She does have all four teats but a few lactation's ago she had a bad case of Mastitis and unfortunately it took over her whole front right quarter and we could never recover it. However, we were fortunate enough to be able to keep her since it did not take over the whole udder.

Miss Three Teat had been a dry cow for the past couple months and we were keeping a close watch on her since she was due any day. And she was HUGE.  

Back to my original story here, my dad finished that statement with, “Three Teat had her calf but there are two calves out there and only Three Teat seems to have had the calf.” I am thinking to myself, “So what? We had twins, awesome!” Until he told me one was black and one was Holstein. UHHHH? WHAT?!

Now meet Deany and Jenny.

Aren't they the cutest little babies?!?

Deany and Jenny were named by my sweet little 4 year old niece for us the day they were born. The all black calf is Deany and the Holstein calf is Jenny. How lucky are you to get two calves on the same day? 

Well for us very lucky since we only have 66 cows milking right now, we do not get a calf every day like the larger dairy farms.

So, we have one cow that calved and two calves. My immediate thoughts are they must be cross bred calves no big deal. But they are NOT. The Holstein calf is a pure bred Holstein and the black calve is a Holstein/Angus cross.

How in the world did this happen?!?!?!

This was a big first on our farm. It appears that Three Teat was a bit scandalous nine months ago (283 days is the average gestation period). At the time we were running a Holstein bull and the Angus bull with our Dairy Cows. She had been bred by both bulls. You would assume whoever’s specimen got to her ovulated egg would win the race, but she had a unique pregnancy. Three Teat cycled two eggs during her ovulation period, during that time each bull successfully implanted an egg each. During the growing period, each calf grew in the opposite uterine horns. They did not share the same fluids and placentas that we could tell anyway.

Deany

Some of you may know about Free Martin Heifers. This is when you have a set of twins one is a bull and one is a heifer. This unfortunately makes the heifer infertile and given the name of a Free Martin heifer. We do not believe this is the case for our new set of twins. Since they did not share the same fluids and such the heifer should be fertile since it was as though Three Teat carried the calves separately, yet together.  A great article here about Free-Martin heifers if you would like to know more!

Jenny

We were all skeptical at first that the all black calf really was that way until we looked closely at to see if they were polled or not. Polled is a term for if they have horns or not. Jenny has some bumps on her head and is not polled, while Deany is smooth and a polled calf. We know for sure that they do not share the same father because of this simple trait because the Polled trait is the dominant trait. Therefore, if both bulls would have been polled each calf would have been too. However, the Holstein bull is not a polled bull (I wish he was though!). Crazy huh?

Even crazier, the twins were not born premature and both weighed around the normal weight for a newborn calf. I was not kidding when I said she was HUGE, when she exited the milkbarn she could barely fit through the doors.

The twins are doing well and making great progress for twin calves. Momma is doing well and back in the herd working full time again and everyone had a good time telling friends and family about our little scandal! J

It really was a once in a life time experience and I have only read one other story about it happening, somewhat like our story! 

Here is to you having an interesting day of your own!

The Milkmaid