Snow Baby

Mockingbirds are tough folks....
click on this one if you want to see some of the heaviest snow I have ever experienced

We got a whopper of a snow storm yesterday. I don't know how else to describe it. Hard snow all day and slashing rain and sleet far into the night. The roads were so bad it took Alan half an hour to get from the school to Ice Cave Road. Church Hill was closed in town. The S-bend on Grovenors Corners Road was impassable without four-wheel-drive and there were police at both ends dealing with the cars that couldn't make it.

I would have hated to be an emergency responder person or a plow driver. They must have all been worn out half to death last night.

So, of course, naturally, inevitably, Broadway decided to finally have her nearly two weeks overdue calf. Of course she waited until night milking.

As soon as we could feel feet we could tell that it was coming breech. When a calf is born hind feet first there is some real urgency in getting it delivered in a timely fashion. When the umbilical cord is pinched or torn when the belly passes through the cow's pelvis, (a normal thing in a frontwards birth), the calf's head is still inside the cow. When it instinctively gasps to breathe it gets a big lung full of amniotic fluid instead of air, as would be the case if it was in the right position. Not a good thing.....

And getting a quick delivery done was made just about impossible by the size of the calf. It was HUGE. So big that after waiting in vain for hours for something to happen, when Liz and I tried to pull it we couldn't. Had to call the boss. Normally the calf's head acts as a wedge, widening out the birth canal and making room for birth to progress. In a breech birth, you have a couple of long skinny legs, which do not serve that purpose, then a huge fat butt, which acts more like a cork than a wedge.

This calf had a fanny the size of a month old calf. It was a lot harder pull than we like to see, but we got it in the end.
Incredibly it is a beautiful red roan heifer. After such a hard birth I didn't expect much, but it is standing up this morning, all spunky and lively. Momma likes it just fine.....and so do we. We will try to get some pics for later, although it is going to be a busy morning dealing with the aftermath of the weather.