Secrets

I try to be quiet when I do early morning barn check. The girls are all lying down, many of them sleeping and I hate to disturb them.

The barn is so different in the hours before dawn. Mysterious rustles, soft grunting and puffing as the cows chew their cud, none of the usual hustle and bustle and noisy talk and machinery running.. 

No calves this morning, although Bailey is standing and looking uncomfortable. Poor old thing. If she doesn't calve pretty soon we will have to induce her labor. She is 11 and doesn't need a hard calving at her age. The bull she is bred to has thrown some awfully big calves and she is four days overdue.

I feed the springers and fresh cows a little hay and go back to the house to wait for the rest of the world to wake up, leaving the cows to the secrets of the night.