Today started out like many others: we went to fetch the cows. They came in with a little more bother than usual — but nothing unmanageable. As we were walking them in we noticed that Rachel, one of the expectant, was walking slowly and a little funny — with her tail cocked in an odd manner — and that she was starting to dilate…obviously going into labor. Once milking was under way, she began to show more signs. She was laying on the ground and shifting her legs around in what looked like an awkward manner.

The barn isn’t really a great place to have a calf. For one thing, it’s kind of dirty - there is shit everywhere. There are many cows in very close quarters. Most importantly, perhaps, we’re actually pretty busy in there trying to get a job done. For all these reasons, once her water broke, we decided to give Rachel the option of leaving the barn. We let her out of the stanchion and shooed her out into the middle.

Instead of leaving, though, she just kind of staggered around a little and then walked across the aisle, stuck her head right into an empty stanchion and, in what may well be the most well documented calfing in history, proceeded to give birth right onto the barn floor. By the time she was done — just about 20 minutes later — the entire work crew and a few visitors were crowded around watching and shooting photos. I managed to get a lot of good photos, of which some are posted here. I’ll try to get a decent slide show up sometime over the next few days.

This was the first birth of any kind that I’ve seen. It was actually a little less “gross” than I was expecting. There was some but not an inordinate amount of blood. It was pretty cool to see the calf literally sliding out of the birth canal and, in a way, even more impressive to see her struggle to stand almost immediately. Within fifteen minutes or so, she was standing on her own. Granted, we helped it along, dragging her out of the barn so she would have a less slippery surface to work with — and so we could turn out the rest of the herd — but I think she would have been just fine without us.

I’m really glad that I got to see this — and even luckier that I had my camera in my pocket. Typically, the cows give birth out in the field and we find out about it in the morning. While doing it in the barn isn’t so great for workflow, it makes it much more convenient for us gawkers.

That said, Jonathan told us he’s pushing the next cow that goes into labor out of the barn. The birth really tied things up during the end of milking. We couldn’t let the rest of the cows out when the milking was done for fear of the baby (as yet to be named) getting stepped on. Once we could finally let them out, they immediately made for a field they weren’t supposed to be in and easily managed to bypass the barbed-wire barrier. We turned most of the herd around and got them where they were supposed to be, but one of the steers, Chumley, and two of the heifers managed to get out.

We left them alone, planning on joining them with the herd in the morning, but they freaked out a little and tried to find the herd on their own. Chumley got himself all the way over to the field they were in, but got his head stuck in a barbed-wire gate. Luckily, a passing motorist saw him and let us know. He wasn’t too badly stuck — or too badly cut up — but this was a pain for him and us nonetheless. We also inadvertently separated one of the recent mothers from her calf. By the end of the day, though, we got all of the cows back where they should be and are ready to face tomorrow.