CALF PULLING 1010

Grab a box of tissues, roll of toilet paper or whatever you fancy when it comes to wiping your tears. That's right I used the word "fancy" what of it!?! This wasn't supposed to be a sad story, it was supposed to be another farm adventure for Clayton...

So there we were...I have been telling Clayton that his next farm project is to pull a calf in order to prepare him to be my midwife when we have little ones (yes we will pull our kids with bailing twine). You might remember a few posts back where Clayton "breeded" a cow, this is not the calf from that cow. A cow's gestation is a little longer than that. Sunday Pop's told us that there was a cow ready to give birth. After lunch we went to check on the cow, but found that it had already given birth. Pop's said not to worry there would be 1 or 2 more cows ready to give birth before the end of the day. Around chore time Clayton put on his "work shorts" and headed down to the calving pen. NOTE: Clayton's "work shorts" consist of a pair of WHITE basketball shorts that he wears to help out on the farm. They look extremely sexy with his gray boots. Clayton told my dad that a hoof was sticking out of the cow's butt. Pop's put some bailing twine around the calf's hoof' and Clayton sat down to pull (in his WHITE "work" shorts).

Here is where the sad part comes in. After a few minutes of pulling (and posing for pictures) Clayton had to turn the reigns (or twine) over to pops because Pops was guessing that the calf was dead. Pops had to put on the crank and get the calf out of there because if he didn't get it out fast enough it would paralyze the cow. He finally got it out of the cow and sure enough it was dead. It had been dead for awhile. The umbilical cord had broken off and it had drowned. Sad...
To make things worse the dead calf was a heifer and heifers are worth more than bulls...at least in the dairy cow world (which is how it should be in the human world too). So that was our sad day. The bright spot (or brown spot...you decide) was that Clayton sad in cow crap.
I don't think even a little Tide+bleach will get that out. Good thing that they are his "work shorts."

Even after 27 years of watching cows give birth I still learned a few things...well 2 things

1. You can usually tell if a calf it a heifer or a bull before it comes all the way out. If the hooves are pointed it is a heifer, if they are more rounded it is a bull.

2. Cow's CAN have epidurals (that's for you Jessie)