Who Needs Routine Anyhow?

First an all-important indoor plumbing feature went on the wonky road. The men have spent a good part of the week and all of yesterday working on that situation. It MAY be fixed. Maybe.

Then the milk truck driver called and wanted to pick the milk up at 4 PM. We milk at 5:30. There needs to be time to wash the tank, so that shuffled timing a bit.

Still, things were under control. 

Kinda.

Then I looked at the weather forecast. Torrential downpours for today. Training thunderstorms...and I don't mean training them to go elsewhere.

Dang. I went over to the barn to let the boss in on the happy situation and suggest some potential actions. Should we maybe feed early and the have him go chop a fresh load of haylage for the next couple of days? While the girls and I did chores and milked the cows?

Yeah, prolly. You really can't chop wet grass any better than you can mow it and the indoor animals have to eat. Plus we are supplementing the pasture with green chop for the milkers. We didn't have enough feed left for today....

So he and I fed, we let the cows down to eat, put them in, and he went back to chop.

So far so good.

However, among the crew coming off the hill was Laramie, a little milking shorthorn heifer who was due to calve. No sooner did she come in the barnyard but she got right down to business. Of course the other cows wouldn't leave her alone. Nosy beggars.

She is pretty wild and has been giving us fits all week trying to keep her down where we could watch her while the others went to grass. Sometimes we got her. Sometimes we didn't. 

This time she was fairly interested in what she was doing so it was at least possible for the girls and me to hold her while we put the others out at the end of milking.

She is dumb though. Really, really dumb. She proceeded to pop the calf out standing up. Whack. Right on the ground. It was entirely contained in the placenta still and had been stressed enough to pass its meconium before birth.

I thought it was dead.

It wasn't. 

It wiggled. 

So Liz cleaned its face, ripped off the placenta, got it breathing, and tried to get Laramie to take care of it.

No way Jose. He was too smelly for her taste and instead of mothering she wandered around stepping on him and looking for her calf.

She knew she had one somewhere....but where did she put it? 

"Um, honey, he's right there under your nose...."

"Yeah, but that one stinks. I want a different one", So she kept looking

What a tough guy though. Half an hour after he was born he was standing up and nursing despite her not wanting anything to do with him and pushing him around while she looked for that phantom calf.

Eventually we got done and went to the house. Somewhere along the way I realized that I forgot to put the meatloaf in the oven. So I cooked it after chores and we had sandwiches instead.

Seriously, who needs routine, when there is so much excitement available?


***Update, back from the barn after morning calving check and mama was out on the feeder with baby following her as if he had done it all his life...oh, wait...