My cow Lucy was due to have her calf on Thanksgiving but I threw the blinds open at dawn the Saturday morning before and this little nugget was running around.
She was born sometime during the night or early morning and it was cold, probably high teens. That Saturday was cloudy and in the 50s, not too bad but not great due to the lack of sun. And rather than stay with mom, she kept crawling under the electric wire to bed down in a ditch. I kept checking on her and she always felt warm. That night at dusk Jonny carried her out of a ditch to be with mom. The following morning I found her by herself in a ditch again, a layer of frost on her back. But when I went to lift her up, or rather just get her to stand up, she was toasty warm. I coaxed her back under the fence to be with mom. After another escape that morning we decided to put up some sheep netting type fence rather than rely on the wire since even two rows wasn't keeping her in. A couple weeks later and this has worked a treat. It's just a nuisance to set up compared to posts and wire and I don't have enough for a really large paddock. We've transitioned now to a bigger paddock with a mix of sheep netting and wire/posts with triple wire. So far it's working. She much larger now.
I don't have many photos, black cows are so hard. I try and it sucks so I get discouraged.
Proud mom Lucy and baby
I also don't like to interfere with mom and baby too much in those early days. The baby is actually not fearful but mom gets stressed out. The baby actually gets more fearful of people as she gets older. But this little bug is pretty confident, this morning she was going to take on a buck with some decent antlers all by herself. Mom and the others came in for back up thankfully and the buck took off into the neighbor's pasture. It was a bit sketchy for a few tense moments since the buck had an injured rear leg and I wasn't sure it could jump but thankfully it mustered enough adrenaline to get over. It was a bit too much Wild Kingdom for first thing in the morning.
She needs a name. And more photos. And video. She has hilarious running fits, charging around the pasture and kicking up her heels. Unfortunately she only predictably does it at dusk when the lighting isn't fabulous. Part of the reason this post is so delayed is because I wanted to get more better photos but clearly it wasn't happening. And after much debate I finally decided to go ahead with a booster shot which I got just a few hours ago so chances are I'm going to be out of commission for some time.
As an aside, I had really wanted to have the needle aspirated if I was going to get a booster and this is something that isn't typically done in the U.S. This is done to ensure that the needle hasn't gone into a vein and requires a simple pull back on the needle plunger to make sure there's no blood. It takes a matter of a second but the CDC doesn't call for it. The risk of hitting a vein is low, 1 in 1000, but it's still a risk and may be responsible for some of the more serious vaccine reactions we're seeing emerging. There's no down side to it, the only problem is finding a practitioner who will do it, especially if you're in the U.S. Jonny got his booster at a mobile vaccine bus unit and they refused to do it. So I called the local hospital clinic and asked very very nicely if they would do it for me. And the pharmacist agreed to do it! The one small advantage of living in a small rural town with major vaccine hesitancy, exploding case rates, and statewide hospital capacity nearly at its breaking point. I had to wait a bit because the first person that came to give me my vaccine had never aspirated a needle before and wasn't at all comfortable trying. But the pharmacist, busy as she was, made time to come in and do it for me. She also had never done it before but she was comfortable trying and managed beautifully, in fact I never even felt the needle go in. She apologized for making me wait and I thanked her profusely for doing it for me. Here's a video about needle aspiration for those who are interested. Again, the risk of hitting a vein is very very small but an aspiration takes no time at all and carries even smaller risk so why not do it? Better safe than sorry, especially when there's no downside.
We're supposed to get snow on Thursday night, how much remains up for debate. Weather Channel says 1"-3", a local weather forecaster says more like 6"-8". In general the Weather Channel is more accurate but we'll see. The real worry is that the high for Friday is 27 degrees, going down to 3 degrees overnight. The calf has mostly experienced the 50s, today I think is the first day in the 40's. She seems pretty hardy though. We had one day of rain and 50's right before dark when she was only a few days old and she was out there running around in it all hyper crazy pants like it was the best day of her life. She has a loafing shed and the rest of the herd to keep her warm so I'm hoping she'll be o.k. And that I'm not too debilitated with vaccine reaction to deal with it.
I've had my Oura ring now for a couple few weeks and some interesting date from it, more on that to come.
