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Blogs by Linda Watson
Low Arvie woes 10/17/2010 10:58:09 PM
Hi
Just when we thought we had had every experience that farming cows could bring, along comes another one.
Last Wednesday night Richard found one of our heifers, Jeannie, struggling to give birth to her first calf. The calf was very big and R had to call out the vet to help. by the time he got here it was very dark and when they eventually managed to free the calf, Jeannie just got up and walked away. They could not get her to go back to her calf in the darkness and, in the end, R brought her back to the farm and put her in the shed, before going back to fetch the calf for her. Since then she has shown no interest in him whatsoever and in order to feed him, Jeannie has to be put in the crush and restrained before poor little Jimmy can get his feed of her milk.
We had this earlier in the year with Zoe, but by the second morning, Mother Nature had put things right with Zoe and there has been a very happy ending for them.
We are now five days in with Jeannie and things are not looking good. She has had to stay in the shed with Jimmy and each morning and night we have to put her in the crush to let him feed. We are hoping against hope that she will eventually decide to bond with him but, although she has stopped being aggressive towards him, she is still not showing any sign of looking after him. We dare not let them out of the shed until we are sure that she will.
Now that it is getting colder, the grass has stopped growing and R has started to feed the cows silage, so having to spend this extra time with Jeannie and her calf is adding to the pressures.
Coupled with all of that, I have to spend an extra week down in Warwick for Fred's funeral on Thursday and to give my support to that section of my family.
So life is quite stressful at the moment, hence the lack of blogging for the past days. Hopefully, things will take a better turn soon and life can get back to more normal times.
