I heard Sampson barking on the front porch early this afternoon and went out to find him barking at something at the end of our drive. I figured it was a squirrel then I saw legs under the guardrail near our trash barrels and figured the neighbor's dog was after it. I yelled at him but he would not leave then it walked in the clear and I saw it was a calf. It had evidently slid or crawled under the fence at a game crossing near my mailbox.
I called our friend who keeps a few cows in the neighbor's pasture across the road. Turned out he was at the hospital for surgery so I told him we'd try to catch and pen it up in the yard. When I got down there to actually check I found it was a newborn calf with her umbilical cord still hanging and she was wet and bloody as her mom had not cleaned her up. My wife was there helping so we pushed, pulled and finally loaded it in the wheelbarrow and put her in the back yard.
I got on my ATV and rode over and around the neighbor's pasture looking for a lost or dead cow. I finally found a cow with afterbirth still hanging down by the barn so I came back and hooked the little cart to the ATV and put the calf in it on a bed of hay. I held it down while my wife drove. We dropped the calf by the barn about 65-70 yards from 4 cows and an older calf. The cow had passed the afterbirth and I could not tell which it was. I called and hope the cows came on up to investigate and the cow took possession of her offspring. I called the neighbor's brother and he sent one of their nephews over and I told him what we'd done and suggested if the cow had not taken to the calf they'd need to bottle feed it unless they had another nurse cow who would raise it.
I'll check tomorrow and hopefully find the calf trailing with her mom. There is never a dull day living in the country.
Good job on a good deed. :)
Definitely nice job and interesting 👍
I called my neighbor and he said his nephews went over after leaving us, found the cow and took the calf to her and she started cleaning it up and nursing it right away and all seems to be right with the world. :)
I like cows. Wish I could afford more but it's just not a sensible investment. I'm still waiting on two calves. One was supposed to be a fall calver but the other was supposed to be spring. I had bull trouble. Glad I bought a young one and he did clean up. Unexpectedly.
My son used to keep a few cows here on the place but it was never very profitable (at least not for me ::)) and my fences are in pretty poor shape now. I have one old horse and when he is gone I suspect we will not have any more livestock as it is too much time, expense and work.
I was glad to be able to help a neighbor. That is what we do here. This guy's dad once came and dug ditches to divert floodwater here when we first moved in and I was overseas and a few years later his ex-BIL once came up in a flood and found a big metal culvert had washed down and gotten crossways under my bridge and was causing the creek to wash my bridge out. I was overseas and my wife was teaching school and he just came up to check. Nobody had called and asked him to come. When he saw it he jumped on my ATV and pulled it out and saved my bridge - the only access to my house.
Good friends and good neighbors are way more valuable than money and I can never repay what I've already gotten so all we can do is try.
Can't get any newer.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/34659/034EBD28-DDD5-4E91-A9ED-4ACA284A51A8.jpeg?easyrotate_cache=1665798273)
Looks good, looks pretty Herford from here. :)
Yep. Mom is mostly Hereford. Dad is all red angus. Moms a heifer and she seemed small to me, I was worried but she did well.
Pretty cute!
Quote from: Firewoodjoe on October 14, 2022, 09:57:53 PM
Yep. Mom is mostly Hereford. Dad is all red angus. Moms a heifer and she seemed small to me, I was worried but she did well.
Angus bulls are generally run with the dairy heifers here, even jersey breed, because they tend to produce smaller calves, so less calving problems. Once they are proven producers they are bred back to AI bulls to produce replacements, but that first calf is usually an angus or hereford cross, because you can sell all black or white head calves to the beef rearers. They know they are beef / dairy X, but they fatten up OK.
Here a lot of Angus are bred BIG, makes the packers happy that way. I have seen scale slips on cows at 1,700 lbs. I like crossing my heifers to Herefords or South Polls, makes for a nice beef. Looks like a nice pair there.
The local Angus fatten up nice, and are tough enough to handle the steeper country, but they aren't the big lanky calves like the Fresians drop.
First year farming with Sharon my ex, we had a hill paddock at the back of the farm they we hadn't grazed over winter. It was too steep to risk contract grazed dairy heifers in, and we didn't have our own beef stock. Neighbour was running short of grass in early spring, and asked if he could graze it? Yeah, OK, trade for a loan of one of your pedigree angus bulls to run with the dairy heifers we were grazing. (otherwise we would have had to buy one as part of the grazing contract).
Anyway he sends a bunch of angus cows up the side of this hill, and they get a good feed, and start dropping calves. No "nursery paddock" for those ladies. Go up there a couple of weeks later and there are 1/2 a dozen little black calves bouncing around the hillside after their mothers.
Anyway, it solved 2 problems as we didn't have to buy a service bull, and his mountain goat cattle got well fed. :D