Well, it’s here! The best time of year (besides maybe payday and my personal favorite, Christmas).
Calving season means a lot of things for us on the .7 ranch. It means having all hands on deck 24/7 watching the cows by checking on them multiple times a day. It means new life and sometimes harsh realities of life but it also means the beginnings to a paycheck.
This last Sunday my mom had spent the morning checking all the cows and bringing up the first calf heifers* who were getting close to calving. She had let my brother and I know that there was a heifer that she thought was starting to calve and to check on her first thing when we arrived. When I got there that afternoon, said heifer was certainly in labor. A crick in her tail and some mucus coming out her back end. About 10 minutes later there were three of us there watching her every move. Below are the chain of events in pictures. I apologize for the vulgarity of the first picture but I warned ya it was my intention to show exactly how this ranching thing works 🙂
*Clarification: first calf heifers are the females who have yet to have a calf. We pull them out of the herd (always with a buddy) and put them close to the barn so we can monitor them more closely in case there are any complications. Because these animals are rookies to being a mother we take extra precautions to ensure live and healthy calves.