Once the morning
necessity had been completed, Catherine and me where back to
delivering hay bails to cattle. James took a few load in the
beginning but went of on his quad to who knows where in the end
whilst us other two had a drive around. We had a check up on the the
young cows with calfs in paddock “Five” where there where some
dead cows lying around. Well, that is how it is. Lots of calfs and a
few dead cows. We saw no cows in distress, but in the paddock
“Driveway” a cow had had twin calfs. That always seems to be a
fickle situation. James said that in 25% of cases one twin dies, 30%
both die. This cow had left the stronger, mewling calf behind and was
tending the weaker calf by her side. Without intervention the
stronger one would die of hunger or cold after a while. So we rounded
her up and dropped both her calfs and her in to a smaller paddock
with hay. That way she would have a reason to stay in the paddock
with the two calfs. We where lucky the birth was seen soon enough, as
any longer out in the paddocks further away from the house would have
left one calf dead. That seems to be a pretty common thing, actually.
Once we had that sorted
out we had some lunch. James shot a rabbit a few days ago that was
eating the bark of his new trees, so that was our lunch. As the
rabbit had been hit with a shotgun round you had to make sure you
weren't eating any shotgun pellets. After lunch I had a check run for
the spooked cow and the calf. We still weren't sure if the calf was
hers or if she had accepted it and James had only seen her in the
morning on a check tour, not the calf. Coming over the hill in a ute
I saw from quite a distance that they where together and turned
around and left them alone. Coming back I took a drive with James to
one of the further away paddocks, “Lucern” and “Top”. We took
a tour up the top of the hill at “Top” and let the hay bail roll
all the way down until we had a nice stretch of hay. The cows and
calfs appreciated it and we left. Getting back James took his tractor
with a contraption for hay sorting on the back to another part of the
farm whilst I started to get the chain saw running to cut up some
wood. I managed a few tree trunks when the chain saw gave up and I
had to readjust a screw. In the meantime James had returned and was
getting an old saw running for smaller stuff. A disc saw you powered
with the back of your tractor. As he had done some repairs and
changes he was the one to try it first whilst I cut him up some
pieces. By the time it was getting dark we stopped with a bit of a
bigger pile for fire use.
After some chicken
dinner Catherine and me had to feed the fresh twin calfs some milk,
as we weren't to sure the mother had. A bit of a drama in the dark.
We got to one calf but it would just not take the milk. By that point
the mother had lost her fright of us and was getting closer so we
backed of. The one we had been trying to feed got up and followed her
whilst the other one was standing in one spot. Luckily this one did
take two bottles of milk and will most likely have enough energy to
survive until the morning. The other one was scampering around the
cow, but to stupid to figure out how to feed from her teats. We had
one problem, the cow was thirsty and there was no water in her
trough. What does a cow do? Go to another place with water. A fence
in the way? Squash that. After lots of VERY SLOW arm waving (don't
want another spooked cow) we got her back in her pen. Next thing,
fence is squashed again. Catherine and me lost her and her following
calf whilst we got the other one beside some dry hay and just closed
of the whole area in the end. Catherine spotted a shadow moving
across somewhere and after some looking with the torch, two pairs of
eyes shone back from the other end of the enclosed space. We left her
and her following calf at that and went inside for me to write the
blog and the rest to go to bed.
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