When Anna was born on March 9th, thirty years ago, it was a year like this one. It was severely cold and the snow was deep and hard. In preparation for calving in the home pastures, we had to make trenches in the snow for the cattle. Mark did that again this year.
He was still teaching back then and was doing an evening check on the heifers when Anna was a week past due. We had agreed that if I needed him, I would turn the yard light on at our home a quarter mile away. He was making his rounds, just about to ride back through the cattle, when he looked back towards home. He saw the light shining and hurried back.
Anna was born twenty minutes after we arrived at the hospital. I remember leaning against the car door in the parking lot, bracing against a contraction and wondering why this was happening so fast. All turned out well and I recall thinking, “I can’t help with the calves anymore. I have my own new life to tend.”
Leah is pregnant now, as she was almost two years ago with Emma. This being pregnant during calving season feels very familiar. We were laughing about it this morning in the feed truck. It’s tempting to make comparisons (there’s actually a lot of them) between pregnant cows and pregnant women, but if you’re a man DON’T SAY IT. We, the mothers, might bring up something amusing about waddling cows, contractions, birth fluids, etc. but you can’t. Too real.
Yesterday I helped Mark with a newborn calf that hadn’t sucked as it was getting dark and colder by the minute. The baby would probably have figured it out, but just in case, we brought the pair in to the barn. The cow was a sweetheart. She stood quietly in the alleyway while Seth crouched at her side, guiding the calf to the teat. Since there was plenty of milk, Seth stole a little from another quarter to keep in the fridge in case another calf needed a boost. The first milk, colostrum, affords immunity to calves before they have their own disease resistance and is critical in the first couple hours after birth.
Mark told me she was a blog cow - he does that from time to time, remembering them much better than I. She’s X14 yellow, a black brocle. She was the first heifer to calve in 2013, the year I wrote about her. She surprised us one morning with a little look-alike calf at her side. We hadn’t brought the herd to headquarters yet, so the baby walked along following mama back to the ranch.
Mark found the old blog post and requested "then and now" photos. He said Seth told him the cow had personality extraordinaire. Wish they were all like her.
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| 2023 |
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| 2013 - dang, that bare ground looks nice! |
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| Emma is almost 2 |
