Friday, June 8, 2007

Today I watched a cow give birth to her calf! I'd never seen anything being born before. When she came out her eyes fluttered a little and she snorted a couple times and then she was awake. It was like watching her come to life. Incredible. We just happened to walk the dry cow barn, where the cows close to calving live, first thing today. The cow had already laid down in the middle of the aisle in the pen, so we moved her to a calving pen (much cleaner) and went to do the fresh cow (cows that have just calved) check. We came back 45 minutes later and the feet were out.

You can just see the calf's nose above the feet. It looks purple because the amniotic sack is still covering it. We ended up helping the cow out by pulling the calf, because we could see its tongue and it was starting to turn purple. Here is the newborn heifer (female) calf!



I really have nothing else to say except that it was just incredible to witness the whole thing.


The feed guy, Russ, comes on Fridays to discuss any adjustments to the diet. It's called Friday Therapy because all the farm employees vent about how the research scientists complicate their routines. One thing Russ does is take samples of the different components of feed to check protein levels, among other things. Here he is taking a sample from an alfalfa bale. I tried to do it to but the bales are packed really tightly and I couldn't get the corer to go in!