Our fall calving began almost a month ago. As of right now, this minute, we have 49 calves, subject to change quickly.

Here are a few of our first-calf heifers and their calves, relaxing and taking naps. Eight of ten have calved.

All baby calves are cute, but I am particularly fond of the little white-face calves. Their little faces are so snowy white compared to the adults, and will never be this white again!

The little calf in the above picture doesn’t have his identifying ear tag because Mama #508 is very, very protective, as Bill learned years ago with the first calf she had on our farm. The ear tag will be inserted as part of the preparation prior to the cow/calf pairs going to their winter quarters. A few days after the calf was born, I made the mistake of sneaking too close to try to get a glimpse of it. Mama #508 pawed the ground and issued a terse warning, “Any closer and I will hurt you!” She continues to threaten me whenever I venture into her realm in the pasture.

This tagging process pictured below went very smoothly. Mama #202-3 was off to the side eating grain Bill poured on the ground as a distraction so he could tag her calf. The calf didn't struggle or bawl for its mother to come to the rescue. I was able to get close for the photo without upsetting the pair.

One of our favorite cows, Proud Mary, of “Boomer Sooner Bovine” fame (or infamy), had a nice heifer this year. A week and a half later, her daughter, Creedence, also had a heifer. I’ve used up all the distinctive female and male names I could think of related to the group “Creedence Clearwater Revival”—Creedence and Fogarty—plus Ike and Tina (Turner) who also performed the song “Proud Mary.” I researched songs recorded by CCR and found “Suzy Q” and “Good Golly Miss Molly” (didn’t know CCR recorded that one). Problem solved: Say “hello” to Miss Molly and Suzy Q! 

Calf #261 has a white spot on its side, another on its forehead, white hair on its belly and four white socks. We might name her “Spot.”

Our Charolais-mix cow, Sweet Pea, gave birth to a little mini-Pea this year although it’s not a heifer, it’s a bull, but a big one! Sweet Pea, a veterinarian and I shared a major adventure a year ago when her calf presented backwards. I blogged about it in “Trooper, the Holstein Adoptee—Part 2.” This year’s birth was uneventful. Bill and the pasture land-owner named this calf “Snowball.”

After I snapped the pictures of Sweet Pea and Snowball, we checked on another cow in the same pasture due to give birth any time. We found #207 and her new heifer, who inherited the black curly hair of her father, our bull, Romeo.

One of my favorite activities with calves is to sit very still on the ground and see if they will approach me. Some will; others are too skittish and won’t. Those who do are usually still a little hesitant and it may take a while for them venture close enough to take a sniff. As I was waiting on the calves, I felt a larger presence behind me. First Calf Heifer #76-1 sniffed and nudged me, begging for range cubes. I felt her licking the side of my head so just aimed the camera and shot four pictures. This was the only decent photo of either of us!

Miss Molly and Sox…the future of the Hilbert Herd?

Like her mother before her, First-Calf Heifer #25 turned her first birth into an adventure. Unlike the epic two-day saga we experienced with the elder #25, the daughter’s situation was shorter in duration and less stressful on everyone involved, except maybe for Bill.

In my book chapter titled, “Marginally Unfit Mothers,” I related the story of then-First-Calf Heifer #25. The epic saga began on a Friday evening when Bill was officiating football at an area high school. On our evening walk, Cricket and I found an apparently abandoned newborn calf. The mama wasn’t in the area and didn’t respond to my best calf bawl impression. She eventually arrived on the scene, wasn’t pleased to see me messing with her calf and voiced her displeasure by cussing me in cow-speak! This reaction was a good sign—at least she possessed some motherly instincts.

The adventure turned from scary to scarier the next day when Bill decided to try to bring the pair to the barn, restrain First-Calf Heifer #25 in the squeeze chute, milk her out then feed the milk to the calf. Bill’s plan went south when the front gates on the squeeze chute failed to close, the ballistic heifer rampaged through the opening and nearly trampled me.

Early in the evening on September 4th during our daily exercise/check the cows walk, we found the second generation First-Calf Heifer #25 in labor. Our ten first-calf heifers are pastured near our house so we can monitor the progression of labor. If a disconnect in the communication line between Midwife Mother Nature and the heifer occurs, human intervention is required. We continued on our walk and, on the way back to the house, stopped and observed her for a few minutes. She was lying down, but would occasionally struggle to her feet, then lie down again and have contractions—all normal parts of the labor and delivery process.

About an hour later, Bill went out to check on her. FCH #25 still seemed to be in the same stage of labor and delivery. Bill decided it was time for an intervention. He herded her to the corral and into the squeeze chute so he could pull the calf. She wasn’t happy about this forced relocation of her chosen maternity site. If she’d known what was to follow, Bill would never have gotten her to the corral!

Bill has a calf-puller, but prefers to use a fence stretcher, a device consisting of a rope and pulley. He hooked up the stretcher. After two or three pulls, the calf’s head came out. Then the stretcher rope broke. He left the chute and went into the adjoining barn to get another stretcher. By the time he got it hooked up, the heifer laid down in the chute but started pushing again. More of the calf was expelled and Bill grabbed its feet and pulled it the rest of the way out.

The calf was a large bull and Bill concluded FCH #25 wouldn’t have been able to deliver it without intervention. He laid the calf out in the corral and released #25 from the chute. She charged out, tossing a few choice moo words at Bill, and began to lick her calf.

Bill went out later to check on the pair. Over FCH #25’s objections, he lifted the calf into a standing position but it collapsed to the ground, too weak from the prolonged labor and delivery to stand, much less nurse. Bill came back to the house, mixed up a bag of just-add-water colostrum substitute, poured it into the two-quart “baby” bottle, grabbed a feeding tube, just in case, then went back out to the corral.

FCH #25 apparently inherited her mother’s lack of tolerance for human intervention, because when Bill approached the calf, she approached him with fire in her eyes! He barely escaped through a gate into the alleyway, reached under it and pulled the calf to him. He tried to hold its mouth around the bottle nipple, but it let out a squawky bawl. FCH #25 responded by head-butting the gate. Bill tried the bottle again. The calf bawled and mad mama answered with another head-butt. Finally, to avoid FCH #25 wrecking the gate and giving herself a concussion, and because the calf was so weak, Bill poured the mixture into a feeding tube bag, threaded the tube down the calf’s throat and finished the whole chore in a few minutes.

When Bill checked on the pair the next morning, the calf was up and having breakfast at mama’s table. He intended to keep them shut in the corral for a day, but FCH #25 paced and fussed so he turned them out to rejoin her friends and their calves. This little community of first-calf heifers is close-knit!

To date, eight of our ten first-calf heifers have calved and this was the only delivery requiring human intervention.

Yesterday evening, as I returned to the house from my walk and photo shoot for a calving update blog post, I nearly stepped on this:

Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera were gasping their last charge and I had forgotten to stick a couple in my pocket. As a result, the zoom wouldn’t work without shutting down the camera. I had to creep up close and personal for these shots. Apparently, the snake was agreeable to being the subject of a photo op because it didn't move, not even when I opened the compartment to reposition the dying batteries between shots!

I’d never seen a snake like this one and Bill couldn’t identify it either. We researched his Pocket Guide to Kansas Snakes and discovered it was a king snake, which both of us had heard of.

Later we worked on a new iris and daylily bed, laying down weed mat and covering it with mulch. As Bill scooped up mulch into the loader on his tractor, he saw white, oval-shaped objects.

He thought they might be snake eggs, so broke one open and found a baby, possibly a rat snake. He went back to the Pocket Guide and verified his theory that it was a rat snake. By then, decent light was gone but I was able to get pictures this morning. Yes, I had fresh batteries and used the zoom!

Rat snakes are primarily constrictors and feed on rodents and birds. Judging by the number of eggs Bill found in the mulch pile, I doubt that many rodent families set up housekeeping there. Or, if they did, those snakes are well-fed! One interesting note: The female rat snake can lay from three to thirty eggs at a time. Wow! No wonder there were so many eggs in that mulch pile!

I remarked to Bill the markings on the rat snake are so close to those on a rattlesnake, if I encountered one in the yard it would scare the crap out of me!

The current baby calf count is at 18 and they were coming at the rate of two per day until a 24-hour period from Thursday into Friday when seven were born. Fortunately, labor and deliveries have been uneventful until Thursday evening when Midwife Bill pulled a large bull calf from first-calf heifer #25. Details will be posted later. The first-calf heifers are all model mamas and their calves are thriving. The birth-to-frolic rate seems much quicker than in past years.

Our first-calf heifers have not only embraced their pasture communal living arrangement but extended it to include communal feeding. A couple of the new mothers have no objection to their calves bringing home friends for meals.

One of our favorite cows, Hereford (both her breed and her name), presented us with another fine heifer calf. If this little gal continues to thrive, she’s destined to follow in the hoof-steps of several of her sisters and half-sisters to become a permanent member of the Hilbert Herd. Five of Hereford's last six calves have been heifers which we kept. The year she had a bull calf, we kept a heifer from one of her daughters. 

As I was putting together this post, Hereford’s calf from two years ago, which Bill kept as a replacement heifer, gave birth to her first calf.

Another one of our favorite cows, One-Toe, also delivered a prospective future member of our herd. One-Toe was featured in one of my book chapters by the same name. As a first-calf heifer, she developed a severe case of foot rot, resulting in the amputation of one “toe” on her right rear hoof. The stress of the prolonged disability and surgery resulted in a premature calf. The calf survived, but had a low birth weight and remained behind its peers in physical development. Since then, One-Toe has delivered good calves, but they were mostly bulls. Bill is already projecting this heifer he named “Two-Toes” will be a keeper. The second picture shows the one-toe hoof.

While I was out taking pictures of the first-calf heifers, I saw buzzards circling overhead. Four landed on fence posts but flew away before I could get a shot. One of the heifers had given birth a couple of hours earlier and expelled her afterbirth, then left it to go feed her calf. New mothers usually eat the afterbirth, known as placentophagia, and opinions vary as to why. According to some experts, the cow eats afterbirth as a bonding act with her calf. Other experts argue placentophagia is not really considered a bonding act since it can occur anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours after the birth. Other theories for placenta snacking include:

1.  Hunger—The cow is understandably hungry and craving a high-protein post-natal snack, and a pile of placenta is conveniently close.
2.  Predator avoidance—To remove any evidence of the birth so the smell doesn’t attract hungry predators.
3.  Instinct—No explanation; they just do it.

The circling buzzards were no doubt anticipating a much tastier meal than the usual road kill!