I feel like an OB nurse lately...

Of the last 13 cows to calve, we had to pull 13 calves. Basicaly, their cervix does not dilate all the way. This makes it hard to even know when the cow is calving since they won't always readily show signs. We really have to watch them closely. If they are close to their due date, and even kinda look like they may be calving we have to go in and check them. Most of the time they are mostly dilated, but not all the way. We've tried waiting, but nothing happens.

Oh, by the way, 10 of the said cows calved during the night. Theres nothing like getting up in the middle of the night to go check a cow. Once it appears the cow is starting to calve, you have to watch them cloesly and check their dilation often. We take turns going out and doing this. I would think this is how a person having a baby feels, the nurse comming in every so often checking their cervix. I can barely remember when Kristina was born the nurses doing this. Abby will get the joy of that in a few months : )

To remedy this problem, we are changing our mineral mix. Our vet and nutritionist think it could be a mineral or vitamin inbalance. I hope it helps, because I'm tired of beign a OB nurse.

Thank goodness for this stuff...

And these (lots of them)...

And, mostly this...

With these things I can almost always get the calf out, eventually (I'm an awsome ob nurse)

So Un-coopertive

9-10-08 Why do cows kick you?

Sometimes they have good reason. If you scare them. Or if you try to stick your arm up their butt, I'll give them that, I probably do it then too. But sometimes, theres no good reason. I got kicked today by the way, three times actually while milking tonight. Maybe I smelled funny, I don't know.

We started chopping corn!! We plant some early corn in case we run out of silage, so we chopped that off. Just as we were getting done, it started raining cats and dogs. 2 of our semis got stranded out in the middle of the field. They are nice to haul with, but useless in wet weather. Then our JCB's shine with silage trailers. The corn was kind of wet, its really behind this year.