As many of you know, I’m a cattlewoman. You see me post on my facebook about my new baby calves and you see the new baby’s pictures. What you don’t see is everything it takes to calve cows on a farm. It’s not as simple as just ‘letting nature take its’ course’. It’s more intense than that. Let me tell what you what all happens.

First off, it starts all the way back, nine months before. Or ten. Or eleven. Depends on when the cow got bred. We keep records of when we let the bull out and check everyday to see if the cows are in ‘heat’. (When a cow is in heat, it means that she is ovulating and ready to be bred. She emits signs of this physically. She will either mount other cows, other cows with mount her, and/or she will act different than normal.) If we happen to see a cow get bred we write in down in our calving book so we know when we can expect a baby. Sometimes we can’t catch them getting bred, but if we know when the bull was let out we can guess that they will all (or close to all) have babies within a three week time span.

Up next, fast forward 9, 10, or 11 months. We don’t even have to look at our calving book quite yet because we know that the momma cows should be getting ready to have babies. They have some very large tummies.

There are many signs to cows having calves. They will be ‘sunk in’ in front of their hip bones, their udders will begin to fill with milk, they will be laying by themselves away from the herd, and their back-end skin starts to stretch for the new arrival.

Once we start to see signs of this, we get out the calving book. We check to make sure that we’re right and then it’s ‘game time’.

On our farm we have ‘maternity pens’. We have a barn that has three pens with lots of cornstalk for bedding and lots of space for her to get comfortable. We put expecting mothers into pens so we can watch her and to make sure that she has a good delivery. Sometimes we need to help and we want to make sure we can when the time comes. Expecting mothers are normally checked every 3 hours around our farm. We also feed them at night so that they are more likely to have the calves in the morning. Don’t ask me how that works, but it does.

If we have to help, it gets intense. You have to take the cow to the corral and up to the head chute. This way she can’t move around and hurt herself or the baby. Then we reach in to see what’s going on. Sometimes it can be a backwards calf or sometimes it’s just too big. Once we’ve figured out what the problem is we move forward! Here comes the baby. We get to play doctor and help her deliver her baby. We use things called ‘pulling chains’ to assist in the delivery. I know ‘chains’ sound horrible, but they’re not. They don’t hurt the baby in anyway. We just need something that has good leverage, can pull a 80 lbs. calf, and is small enough to reach inside the cow. After awhile of pulling and coaxing the momma we’ve got a live, beautiful calf.

The mommas and their new babies are kept in the barn for a couple of days or weeks (weather depending) to make sure that everyone is healthy and happy. They are given their own ration of silage and some corn to help with milk supply. The calves and cows are then sent out to the pasture with the other cows once we are sure that everyone is doing well.

Calving is one of my favorite seasons. I love watching all the new babies hit the ground, run around with their tails in the air, and see the life cycle happen year after year. It’s amazing, being a cattle farmer.

Check out this video of my babies!