Calving Season

This post sure has been a long time coming. In some corner of my brain, I really did think I would get this typed out and published in good time. That's the last time I think optimistically instead of realistically. I guess I'll just jump right into the long-anticipated sequel. We left off with a couple of stories crossed off the list...

- The Misrepresented Drill

- The Haphazard Horse

- The Great Immigration

- The Most Terrible Trip

- The Breath of Life

- Robbing the Cradle

- The Covert Operation

- A Bamboozling Baby

- Flight of the Newborn

...and now we're left with stories that are all to do with calving.

Many moons ago, when I finished the last post, I left off at the story of 'The Breath of Life'. It took me even longer than I had ever imagined to write this post, but at last here it is...

So here's the scene: Dad and I are out at the northern pastures (that makes it sound like we're hours away in the bush, but we were just twenty miles away, in mild bush), checking cows and tagging calves. We've just managed to load a cow into the trailer, as she had a stillborn calf, and Mom is texting me about a heifer calving. We load up and head down the road, thinking the heifer should have her calf by the time we're at the intersection where we can go to the next pasture or turn towards home. When we get to said intersection, though, the heifer has the calf stuck at the hips, and Mom can't get up to her to give it a pull. We turn towards home.

We zipped into the yard, unloaded the quad, grabbed a lariat, and raced out to the heifer pasture, where number 3F was laying, too exhausted to push anymore. Mom had thought the calf would be okay for a bit, so she was staying back to leave the heifer alone.

The calf was not okay, though. The calf was dying, and pretty much dead by the time we pulled up to the heifer, put the rope on the calf's legs, and heaved it out. I stayed by the heifer for a moment as the calf came out, since cows can prolapse at that moment and there's a chance of holding it in if you're right there at the ready. Every time I'm the one that's in that particular 'ready' position, I feel very not ready for my potential job. Not like, 'Ew! Her placenta's touching me!' not ready. More like 'This heifer just exerted tremendous force and pushed a calf out of this hole; I don't know how I'm going to stop her from pushing anything else out' not ready. But this isn't about the heifer. Back to the calf.

The calf gave a couple of weak kicks. Its death throes. That is the worst thing to watch.

I remember when I was quite young and we were trying to save a hypothermic calf by putting it in a bathtub of warm water. I was tasked with holding its head above the water for a little while, and it chose that moment to die. So I kept it from drowning as it gave its last few kicks.

It's not exactly a Batman back story, but it's definitely a lingering memory. Also, Mom and Dad once brought a calf in from the cold and left it in a sled in the hallway. I went out for a drink of water at night and stepped on a little living creature in the dark.

Things like that have been really pivotal in my development as a basket case.

Anyway.

Back again to the dead calf that I was originally talking about.

This calf was dead. Dead, dead, dead.

Death throes dead.

Unresponsive dead.

Not a flicker of the eyes, not a twitch of the diaphragm. Nothing. It was flat-lining on the operating table of meadow brome and alfalfa. Doctor Dad tapped its eyes. Rubbed its chest. Gave it a bit of a shake and a stir. Nothing.

“It's dead!” He proclaimed angrily. “There's nothing I can do! It's dead.”

But nothing is not what he did. Instead, he grabbed the calf's face in his hands, clamped its mouth with one hand and covered one of its nostrils with the other. He took a deep breath, and lowered his face towards the calf. Before he made contact, he took a quick glance at the calf's abdomen, to make extra sure it hadn't decided to breathe. Nope. He would have to do this thing.

Doctor Dad performed CPR. Mouth-to-nose resuscitation on a dead calf.

I watched the little belly flutter full of air. Dad surfaced, took a spit, then tapped on the little, floppy rib cage. I don't remember a lot of the first aid I took as a part of swimming lessons, but I am almost positive Dad wasn't following any of the rules. Not that I wanted to take over.

The first breath didn't do anything, so Dad repeated the process a few more times. As he turned to spit out some of whatever the calf had given him in return, I saw movement.

The little flopper was breathing! It had come back to us!

“It's moving!” I shouted, “Do it again!”

By 'it' I meant the CPR, and also whatever strange magic he had employed to bring a calf back to life.

Dad gave the calf more of his magical lung floof, and more of his mystical rib cage pats, and then threw in some most miraculous stirs and shakes. The formula seemed to be working, because the calf was starting to respond! Its eye brightened and rolled back in its head, its legs stiffened up a bit, and it rattled in a little breath. Dad threw in a couple more rounds of the miracle cure for good measure, then we propped the calf up and backed off so that its mother could meet it. As blown away as I was that it had come back to life, I was still not expecting it to really live. I thought some permanent damage must have been done, and that it probably wouldn't even get up and suck. Thankfully, I was wrong on all accounts! When I went to check on it in an hour, the calf had been up for its first meal and was already sleeping off the nightmares it would surely have about waking up to that horrible kiss. A happy ending for 3F... but not quite the end of this story. Now we have to fast forward a few weeks. 3F is thriving out in the pasture, cow and calf both, and we must turn our attention to 39F. Just a regular schmegular heifer out in the heifer paddock, getting ready to calve.

Dad and I both saw her when she was just starting. Often, we'll know a cow or heifer is going to calve because they begin walking suspiciously. The suspiciousness of their walking varies, from just a purposeful power walk in no apparently important direction, to a very uncomfortable waddle, complete with tail switching and squatting. This heifer was on the extremely uncomfortable end of the walk. She was making quite the to do about her discomfort, though I can't really criticize, as I haven't experienced it.

Right away, my guard was up.

Now, my guard went up on a lot of heifers those days, as we hadn't had the smoothest calving season, but I choose to selectively remember all the times my guard was up with good cause and just ignore the many times I suspected the worst and nothing bad happened.

Spoiler alert: this was one of those times that a worst thing happened.

Dad had to go out seeding, so I was keeping the heifers checked regularly, watching extra close for the one that was fidgeting so much. I even took binoculars out and stood watch from a distance as she progressed.

An hour passed. Then another half-hour. Finally, some toes had peeked out, but after a few good rounds of pushing hadn't progressed her any more past the toes, I zipped to the house to call Dad. It took less than five minutes to explain the situation and decide that Mom and I would get her in and try to pull the calf.

We each took a quad out to the heifer. I approached in the lead, so I was the first to see that, in those five minutes, she had actually managed to have the calf. I guess the watched pot never boils. I was relieved as I drove closer to do a quick check that the calf was alright.

It seemed to be fine, at first. I saw that it was moving a bit, so I wasn't too concerned. When I got right up to it, I noticed a bit of the sac was across its nose, but not its mouth, so I just reached down and flicked it off. Potential problem solved. I thought.

Instead of breathing like a normal calf, this stupid little flopper was just laying there as though it was too difficult to breath, so he was just going to quit. I jumped off the quad and started trying to shake some sense into him. I poked, prodded, and tried to startle some breath into him, but he was failing fast, reacting less and less to what I was doing. Mom had arrived by this time, so we lifted him up by the back legs to drain any fluid that might have been blocking his airway. He was still failing. We put him down and I looked from Mom to the calf in horror.

“Really?” I asked her. “Do I really have to do this?”

In all my years, I had only ever seen Dad give a calf mouth-to-nose once; a few short weeks ago. In all his considerably more years before that, he only gave that soggy kiss on one other occasion. How could it be that we were using this last ditch method more than once in a calving season??

Yet there I was, face to face with a soggy little dying thing.

It was less a 'spring into action' moment and more of a sigh, sink to my knees beside the calf's head, and allow myself a tiny moment to contemplate the void that was that little left nostril. I bent over, pulled his muzzle closer, clamped the mouth and closed the right nostril.

'Don't breathe in at the wrong time,' I reminded myself. 'Last chance to lick your lips, too.' This was not my inner voice trying to be helpful. It was my inner voice trying to psych me out. My inner voice is a jerk sometimes.

I took the plunge.

It was a cold and wet kiss. Not enjoyable at all. Would not recommend. To be honest, I'm not even sure if air went into his lungs or his belly. In hindsight, I think it went into his lungs, because since then, I've seen the kiss of life go into a calf's belly, and it looks and sounds a little different (more on that occasion later – it's been a heck of a calving season). After giving him one shot of air, I tapped his rib cage (that seemed to work for Dad) and pumped his front leg some (just for good measure). I could feel a really rapid heartbeat, but the calf still wasn't breathing, so I gave him another shot of air. His heart was still beating, so instead of doing any tapping or pumping, I just tried to poke and startle him again. He was moving a little bit, then, opening his mouth like he was trying to draw breath but couldn't.

I gave him a final shot of air, and that time he tried to pull away from me, which I thought was rather rude, as beggers oughtn't be choosers. He lay for a moment looking disgruntled, but still not breathing. Then, finally, he sucked in a rattling breath. Coughed. Sucked in another.

Either my CPR was successful, or I just made him realize that dying was not as comfortable as he'd thought it would be.

When I made the list for this writing, I thought that was going to be the end of the story, but it is not. Turns out, those calves were two of four that we would attempt to revive with CPR. Unfortunately, the next two were not such happy endings. We brought a heifer in not long after my CPR experience; her calf needed to be pulled. It wasn't a terribly hard pull, and the calf seemed to be alright. I was with the heifer while Dad dragged the calf out of the chute. I could see the calf's head was up and shaking, so I wasn't giving it much of a thought.

Dad couldn't get the calf to breathe, though.

Initially, when Dad had stuck a straw up its nose, it had sneezed and shaken its head. He had even poured some water in its ear and got it to shake. Yet, there it was, slowly dying, refusing to draw in a breath. We tried lifting it up by the back legs and hanging it, pumping its shoulders, and CPR. Nothing would get that thing to draw a breath. It faded and died. That was the second calf to do that to us in two days.

We had a bad stretch of heifer trouble, all in the same week. Two heifers abandoned their dead calves and refused to accept an adopted one, two more needed pulling, and both of them had another calf that wouldn't draw a breath. We went through the same rigmarole of procedures with that calf and did eventually get it to breathe, but the poor little thing wasn't right. He had a strange look about him, and couldn't seem to stand or suck. I gave him a tuber full of colostrum to give him a chance, but he was dead by the next morning, too, and his mother wasn't interested in a new one.

It's not an amusing story; just a part of raising cattle. However, it does lead me to my next set of happenstances on the list of stories to tell: “Robbing the Cradle” and “A Bamboozling Bovine.” All those dead calves left us with a lot of good young heifers that would be cut short in their careers, and if there's one thing my Dad and I know how to do, it's interfere. In fact, we somewhat plan for bovine interference when we're culling cows.

“We should really sell that one,” I'll say as we're doing our spring sort. “Last year, she tried to kill us when she calved.”

That's one of the things we cull for, but here are some other things that might put a cow on the cull list, and the lingo we use for such nonsense:

- conspiring with the herd to run away from us (“She gets the whole herd stirred up.”)

- running us up the fences when we're sorting (“I don't like the way she looks at me.”)

- running through us when we're trying to close a gate (“If she gets through the gate to the cull pen, she can stay there!”)

- having consistently scrubby calves (“I don't think her milk is any good.”)

- getting old (“I don't know if she's going to make another year.”)

-having a terrible udder (“We'll end up having to help her calf suck if we keep her.”)

All of these things will land a cow in the cull pen, but our 'cull pen' is not actually a one-way trailer ride to the cattle market. Culling around here is a process of discernment. Cows usually have a few years left in them after they've gone to the cull side of the spring sort. We put all the cull cows together in a cozy little pasture close to home so they can calve out under our careful watch. This way, the runny ones can't get far, the chasey ones get tagged with a truck, and the ones that are too old or bad-uddered to raise a calf can still work as donor cows. That's the reason I explained our culling system: the donor cows.

As I said, we hate to see a nice young cow come to the end of the road because she hit a snag in calving season. So, we kidnap (calfnap?) a calf from one of the cull cows. Good plan, right?

Well... it's not quite a perfect strategy.

First of all, a calf will only be dazed enough to suck any cow if they're fairly new born. Once they're older, I guess they form a sense of loyalty to dance with the one that brung them. Likewise, a cow has a limited window in which she'll accept a new calf. The fresher, the better for cows, although some will mother anything that moves, while others try to kill calves that aren't their own. It's a broad spectrum.

To add to the risk of these calf transplants, if the transfer is unsuccessful, there is a possibility that the calf's real mother won't want it back anymore because it smells like another calf (then you are stuck bottle feeding a calf because you interfered).

The reason it might smell like another calf is because the transplanted calf gets a special coat to confuse its new mother into loving it. It's pretty macabre now that I have to write it out, but the fact of the matter is, we skin the dead calf and put the hide on the live one, since cows have phenomenal senses of smell, but apparently don't bother counting the numbers of ears and tails on their babies.

We are getting to be pretty professional at transplanting, and didn't get stuck bottle feeding a calf (at least, not for very long). So we'll keep interfering, I think.

There were many transplants done this year. I skinned quite a pile of calves so I could pull that sheep's clothing onto live calves to trick suspicious mother cows. Here's the thing, though: we only transplanted about four.

Before I go into explaining that great accounting error, I first must tell you an exciting tale of calf-nappery. I have been on many covert calf-napping missions over the years, but never have I been sent out alone. Until this year.

I think it was in our bad stretch of luck with the heifers, and another calf had died. Dad had other work to see to, so he sent me out to collect a calf to gift to the heifer. He said I should call Older Brother if I needed, but I like to be independent (also, I hate phone calls a lot). An old cow had just calved that morning, and we suspected it wouldn't have gone far from where we tagged it, so we selected her as our donor cow. I set out with a short, stiff lariat and a whole lot of wishful thinking.

As it turned out, most of my mission went according to wishful thinking. I found the calf right away, near the gate, and managed to sneakity sneak up to it and put a rope on its neck.

As soon as the rope tightened on his neck, he began to serenade me with a song about how his mother was going to kill me when she got there. It was a moving song, and move I did.

I had parked the truck out a fair bit, as it was a swampy area and I didn't want to get stuck. It was only about a hundred yards away from me, but that was a hundred yards of pulling a frantic calf. A calf that had contacted his mother. A mother who was running down the hill towards us. A mother who was singing her own serenade about my demise.

I managed to pull the calf to the truck, but only got in a few feeble attempts at lifting it into the cab before I felt it was high time for a break, since the cow had arrived. I jumped into the cab and closed the door, still holding the calf on a rope. I had to do some catch-up breathing, since I forgot to breathe as I was dragging the calf. I don't usually forget to breathe when dragging calves, but I nearly always forget to breathe when their mothers are running full-tilt down a hill towards me. I think I am allergic to that.

So there I am, a calf on a rope outside my door, and a mother cow circling the truck.

But I really don't like talking on the phone.

So I didn't call Older Brother.

Instead, I waited until the mother cow was on the passenger side of the truck, then I quick-hurry-scrambled into the back seat of the truck and began to pull the calf in. That was hard. I almost couldn't do it, but at that point I was fueled by more things than just my already-pretty-awesome muscle power. The first was how much I hated phone calls. The second was how afraid I was of the mother cow. And the third was a surprising amount of stubborn determination to do this myself. I don't usually have that. I can be stubborn, but it's rarely coupled with determination. It was an empowering sensation, but I will try to avoid it in the future and just ask for help. In fact, I was so exhausted by that single outburst of determination that I made a phone call for help very shortly afterwards. Though I had indeed succeeded in wrangling the calf, I was not able to foil the cow. She followed the truck to the gate and I couldn't get her to back off enough to get through it. I stood thinking for a while on the back of the truck, where I had shimmied to after trying to shoo the cow away. I came to the conclusion that I should call in a favour. Older Brother drove down to meet me and got the gate for me.

After that, the transplant went perfectly.

That particular heifer was excited to have her baby come back to life, but not all of them shared her enthusiasm.

At this point, I will offer you some ranching advice. If a heifer calves and walks away from her baby, she will not want another baby. That's it. That's the advice. It's not even a metaphor, so if you don't work with cows, it is not useful to you.

This is a lesson that Dad and I have had occasion to learn before, but are still struggling to come to terms with. Interfering is just so irresistible.

Now it is time for the story of the Bamboozling Bovine. It should have been kind of a short story. We went out to tag calves in a pasture of 70 cows. We found a hungry calf wandering around with no mother.

When this happens in the bigger pasture of 150 cows, we assume it is a twin. When cows have twins, they will often get up with one calf and walk away, leaving the second one behind. They don't do this to be bad mothers or because they don't want both babies; they just genuinely don't know how to count.

This calf was a little more troubling, though. For starters, he didn't look like a twin. Twins are usually small, thin, and built narrow. This calf was none of those things. This calf was also a brockle-faced thing, with white spots on his forehead and under his jaw. That is a dominant genetic trait, which means at least one parent has to have it for a calf to have it.

There were two brockle-faced cows in that herd.

One had calved weeks ago, and one hadn't calved yet at all. We were bamboozled.

We eyed up the one that hadn't calved yet, looking for any sign that she'd dropped her calf, but we were almost positive she hadn't. In any case, the poor little feller was hungry, so we took him home, fed him, and began the long, arduous journey that was finding him a mother.

This is the reason I skinned so many calves but only did a few transplants.

It would seem no cow wanted to love the poor mystery calf.

The afternoon we found him, he just got a bottle of warmed colostrum from the freezer. We went back to the pasture with him the next day and tried to bait a cow into loving him. No dice. What's more, we rode through them all again and tried to find any that looked like they had dropped a calf. Nothing. We even preg-checked the brockle-faced one. Withno other options, we loaded the poor calf back up and took him home.

At home, there happened to be a quiet cow. A quiet, dumb cow. 64B was her name, and Hereford was her close ancestry. Too close. This cow was on her fifth calf. Back when she gave us her second calf, we happened to see her in the process of calving out in the pasture; she was among a herd of cows that were lounging by the gate. At the time, we checked everything else, then came back to her, planning on tagging her calf. Instead of mothering her calf, though, she had gotten up, left her own, and was bawling after other calves. We tried pushing her to her calf, but she wanted nothing to do with it, so we ended up loading her up and taking her home. After putting her in the chute to let her calf suck once, she accepted the calf, and even loved it.

That was a one-off thing, we thought. She just got confused being in with the herd like that, we thought.

Fast forward to calf number five.

A lone calf. Out in the pasture. It hadn't been licked off, and hadn't sucked. Too big to be a twin. We weren't befuddled for long before Dad exclaimed, “I know who its mother is!” He probably had a flashback to a few years ago, images of the homely red cow flitting across his mind's eye. “That Hereford,” he said. “That Hereford that did this before.”

We rode out and found her, the single red in 149 blacks.

She had definitely calved, and she was definitely not with her calf. We chased her across the pasture to where she had dumped her baby. She was interested in having a calf, but apparently not interested in having her calf, because after smelling him up, she wanted to just leave and keep looking for a different baby. Something is really not wired right in that cow.

Anyway, we ended up roping her to get her loaded, then brought her and her calf home. Once again, after putting her in the chute to be sucked, she took her calf like she knew it was hers the whole time.

So that is the quiet, dumb cow we had around home. We hadn't taken her back out just yet, as we wanted the calf to be a bit stronger to keep up with her in case she was inclined to wander off from him again.

Since she was so quiet, we got her in the chute over the next few days and let the mystery calf mooch meals off of her, rather than bottle feed him.

In a couple of days, we had a heifer get up and leave a dead calf. We tried to give her another chance by transplanting the mystery calf onto her. She was not happy with the arrangement, and in fact, attempted to outright kill the mystery calf by pinning him up against a fence. There were no more chances available to her after that nonsense. We put him back with 64B, who was getting pail-broke and would allow the mystery calf to steal as long as her mouth was full of oats and you stood nearby to yell at her when she kicked. She may be dumb, but she's not stupid.

After that, another heifer got up and left a dead calf. This one was dog-quiet, so we decided to make the same mistake twice and tried again to put the mystery calf on her. This time, we put a long halter on the heifer, so that I could just tie her up and let the calf suck.

In a couple of days, she was pretty halter broke, but though she was quiet she still, in her subtle way, made it clear that she would prefer the mystery calf to be dead.

In the night, we pulled the big, mentally-not-all-there calf from the heifer. In the morning, it was dead, and though the heifer had shown no interest in mothering it, we thought we might as well make the same mistake three times in a row. We peeled one skin off the mystery calf and tied on another.

Third time was not a charm. This heifer also wanted to kill him – not as much as the first heifer, but definitely more than the second.

The calf had lunch with 64B again, then lo! we had another heifer need assistance. It was another calf that wouldn't breath. This heifer wanted her baby, though, so there was hope.

The transplant took.

Mystery calf finally had a mother that loved him.

Looking back on the bull records, we discovered that those heifers that didn't like offspring were all from the same bull. The bull had a snappish quality about him that I have written about in previous articles. Funny how those genetics are sometimes.

Now we can move on to the final two stories on my list. I thought I might as well stick them into this atrociously long post, since they're related to calving season and that seems to be the theme here. I've just taken note that the page count is up to twelve. There is nothing to do now but apologize and assume I will do no better in the future with providing short, frequent posts. Sorry Grandma S and Grandma R.

Anyway, in reference to my list, I'm onto The Covert Operation.

Calving on grass generally allows us to check the cows every other day; we ride through, rope new calves, tag them, castrate the bulls, and record them. It's not too often that there's a mother cow so concerned with her baby that she can't be persuaded to social distance from us (with the help of a long stick). Every so often, I would chase the mothers off with Barb, who got kind of handy at it. She's not in the least afraid of cows, and that makes all the difference. Dad rode his old Fjord cross gelding out one day, and I was able to appreciate Barb's fearlessness. Potsu, the Fjord, is a dead-handy ranch-roping gelding. He is not quick. He is not fast. But if you've got the herd bunched, he can calmly walk through, allow you to throw a loop on any big, cantankerous animal, and stoutly hold in place or drag it out for you.

He's a real calm, steady hand for that kind of slow-speed roping, but if he thinks for a second that a cow might decide to chase him, he is getting the heck out of dodge whether you stay on for the ride or not. When Dad rode him out for a day of tagging, it was a real enjoyable ride until we encountered that one momma cow in the bush. She was not a particularly waspy gal, but she was pretty smart. Cows tend to test the waters with how much they can get away with. When Dad approached that cow's calf in the willow bush, intending to drop a rope on it, the cow backed away but shook her head and snorted. That got Potsu's attention, and she knew it. Dad cajoled a couple steps out of Potsu to get him closer, but the horse and the cow were pretty sure where things stood. The cow tested her theory, taking a couple confident steps forward. Potsu flew out of there, an eight-foot-high willow bunch folding under his belly as he executed a remarkable lateral movement.

The cow had him cowed.

We managed to get the cow into the open mostly by choosing the direction she'd chase Potsu. Once we had a long rope on the calf, we let the dust settle and Dad sent me and Barb in to chase the cow away. At first, the cow was inclined to brush up against Barb a bit, but since Barb stood her ground, she eventually backed off.

Anyway, this isn't even the story I intended to tell. I was just trying to point out that most of our cows won't chase if you stand your ground. However, there's a special place in the cull pen reserved for the ones that do.

Numbers 33Z, 33B, and 33C are all in the cull pen. All three have bad udders, and all three are inclined to be mean-spirited. This story is about 33Z, the worst of the 33's.

When we saw she was close to calving, we knew we'd better check up on her to make sure the calf sucked. We knew we'd better take the truck, since she somehow had more horsepower than our horses did.

It was late in the day when we got out to the cull pasture to check on her. She had indeed calved and, thankfully, her calf had managed to suck.

We decided to tag it.

I don't remember the particulars of how Dad managed to snag the wild little thing. I think he took his life in his hands and just darted out, grabbed a back leg, and dragged it back to the truck.

If you catch a coyote unawares and it takes off from you, it tends to look over it's shoulder as it runs in a sort of frantic and exhilarated way.

That's what Dad reminds me of when he nabs a calf on foot.

He managed to get the calf back to the truck, slip a rope on it, and hop back in before the cow really knew what had happened. One second she was running away with her calf, the next second, her calf was gone.

She knew where to find him, though.

She was circling the truck, but knew her calf was by the driver's door, as we wrote out the tag and recorded the information. “Nerv V Ch,” Dad wrote in the column for dam temperament. That means Nervous, very chasey. She hadn't, yet, but she had a pretty solid criminal record and was a repeat offender.

We watched as the cow darted around the truck and stopped at her calf, and Dad asked if I was ready to go under the truck. I made sure the cow was on his side, then I darted out the door and slipped under the truck. Dad got the calf knocked down, and I dragged it under by the back legs. The cow bellered, but began to circle the truck, confused about where the calf was. When she was on my side, Dad would pull it's head out a bit and quickly clamp a tag into its ear. He got both tags in, then instructed me to get the calf turned so its back legs were out, so he could castrate it. It happened that the cow took off then, in search of her calf, so it was an opportune time for me to skedaddle back into the cab. Dad was done, shortly, and climbed back in himself.

“Good to go? I can take the rope off?” He asked.

“Two tags and he's castrated, right?” I double-checked.

Dad gasped and grabbed the castrating tool again. He checked that the cow was still gone, then ducked out.

When he came back in, he was shaking his head at himself.

“I cut the sack, but forgot to finish the job!” He said.

We waited until the cow came back within sight, then let her calf go and drove away so she'd see it. They got back together, and the cow looked mighty offended.

Since we were just talking about forgetful dads and close calls with castration, there’s really no better time to toss in the memory of Dad swinging a leg over the single-wire electric cross-fence and remembering, around the moment he was straddling it, that we had recently plugged in the fencer. He made quite the face as he sped over the rest of the way, but fortunately for him it was the face of, “oh boy, that could have been really bad,” not, “oh boy, I’ve just experienced 7000 volts in the last place I wanted to experience 7000 volts.”

We recently watched as a cow nonchalantly brushed up to an electric wire, got a loud crack! and grunted as she jumped away. At that time, Dad winced and said, “Oooh, I feel for you, cow.” So if he had gotten his zipper zapped, all I could have done is said, “Oooh, I feel for you, Dad.”

Anyway, old 33z won't be bothering us again. When we needed a calf for transplanting a couple days later, we were driving through the cull pasture to look at our options. We spotted a calf hiding in the grass and Dad said, “If that's 33z's calf, we're just going to grab it now while it's alone; if we change our minds, we can just dump it off again.”

Sure enough, it was hers, so as Dad coasted past, I jumped out, grabbed the little feller, and we hauled him onto the truck. I stayed on the back to hold the calf, and Dad got back in just as the cow was running up over the hill towards us.

And now to the final story of calving season. This one also takes place in that pasture of notorious cull cows, but instead of a momma cow that snapped, it was her calf. It was the Flight of the Newborn.

We were doing a routine day of tagging when we found a calf across the single-wire cross-fence. We weren't worried about it, as it was just barely under the wire, and calves can come and go easily enough under it. It looked like a healthy newborn, but its mother had evidently left it sleeping there while she went to graze or get a drink. Dad figured he knew who its mother was, though. Dad figured we should tag it while its mother was gone.

It seems like a practical idea, but here's the problem... when you wake calves up and you're not their mother, you risk spooking them. Badly. When a cow spooks, she will think, “I have to get out of here, ASAP, and I will be going in the direction of where there's other cows or where I have once felt safe before.” So even if things get a little hairy and you lose a cow, you can usually catch up to her by going to her old haunts.

Calves don't have old haunts. They only have their mother, and when they don't know where she is, their only hope is to run like the dickens.

When Dad got off his horse to slip a rope on the calf across the fence, its head had already come up. I thought, “Uh oh,” and my face pretty clearly said “Uh oh,” but Dad didn't turn to consult my facial expressions. He was probably thinking “Uh oh” himself as he slowly drew back the rope, preparing to swing.

He never got a chance. Uh oh.

The calf sprang up, head high, and started to run. He squirted back through the fence and was in the right paddock, at least. I was already out wide, somewhat prepared for this eventuality. Sometimes a horse can confuse a new calf, and they'll follow its legs if you can sort of merge with it as it runs. This is what I was going for as I cut it off and ran beside it for a little bit. I was also scrambling to get my rope out, hoping I could drop a loop on it. But alas, I am a hopeless roper, and the calf was on my left side, making my attempts somehow even more hopeless.

Suddenly, the calf skidded to a stop and turned around to bolt past me. I was shocked; that was a wily old cow move, not a newborn trick.

Off the calf ran, and he had gotten through another cross fence before I could catch up. We had to go the opposite direction in order to get to the gate into that paddock, so Dad and I rushed through the gate, then ran the half-mile stretch to get to the other end, which the speedy little calf had already gotten to. He had encountered the four-wire fence there, and it was not so easy to squirt through as the cross-fences, so it slowed him down as we caught up.

The calf followed the fence line until he got to a slough that the fence went through, then he pushed through the wire. By then, Dad had gotten to the other side, and we intended to pinch the calf up along the fence and slough so that we could (hopefully) catch him. It takes them a couple of seconds to push all the way through the barbed wire, so we were hoping to catch him as he attempted to crawl back through. The calf apparently saw through our plan, and instead of attempting the wire again, he decided to go for a swim.

This was a slough that was deep with the spring run-off, so after a couple of sloshing leaps, he really had to swim. I ran around to the other side of the slough, jumped off of Barb, and tied her firmly to the fence, since she has displayed zero amounts of loyalty to me in the past.

I took my rope waited on the other side of the slough as the calf swam along the fence towards me. I was poised and ready to jump into the water to rescue him if he decided to swim through the wires and get stuck. Once or twice, his head went under, and I was just jumping forward to go in after him when he reappeared. I waited. Dad waited. We were approaching the moment of truth as the calf reached the shallows on my side. I dropped the rope. It was about as useful to me as fingers made of over-cooked spaghetti. I made slow, steady movements so the calf wouldn't spook away from me. He sloshed out of the slough, head up, trotting along the fence. He was no longer looking to squirt through the wire, though. He was now looking at me a lot like the cow 33z looked at me. “This is good,” I thought. “He'll come right at me and I can tackle him.”

It was one of those rare occasions where the scenario in my head played out in real life.

The calf bellered and came at me and I stepped forward to meet him, grabbing him under the jaw to stop him, then under the flank to drop him onto his side. It was a beautiful maneuver, if only because of its effectiveness.

I held the calf there as Dad ran to get the quad so we could haul it back. We got it tagged and back with its mother, and I don't think he's gone swimming since.

Well, that's it! We finally got through calving season, in real life and in this blog post. Now I can begin to compile a list of all the non-calving-related things that happened since then. Maybe next year, we'll have a better time calving out heifers. Maybe next year I'll write more frequently.