Breathe Deep: Calves coming out of my ears!

I have been meaning to do this post for quite a number of days... I have 2 excuses :)

First was that I have been REALLY busy. Between helping with hauling grain, being in charge of calving, plus all the regular stuff that needs to be done, I did not really have much time to spare!

Secondly since photography is not my most favourite thing I wasn't very motivated to take pictures of all the cows and calves to show you all.... but I finally got out there today :)

So here is a run up of ALL the cows that have had calves in the past week.... hope I don't bore you to much!

Texas was Dad's first cow (named Texas cause of her HUGE horns)
This cow in the picture below is Texas' first calf's first calf....Small Fry's Twin. Small Fry's Twin's mother's name was Small Fry... cause she was a small cow, since her daughter was also a small cow... we named her after her mother, hence the name Small Fry's Twin!
Both Texas and Small Fry are gone cause of old age. :(
Small Fry's Twin had her calf March 19th. I was able to attend and assist with the birth... my most favourite part of calving!

I didn't want to interrupt the calve's meal to take it's picture... so this will have to do :) He was our first bull!

This is Curly, she is name Curly for obvious reasons... um, she is Curly :)

She had her calf March 19th all by her lonesome. I had noticed that she had broke her water, but was unfortunately busy when it was born.

Curly has the SWEETEST low mother moo (there is a certain moo that cows do to talk to their calves... we call it the mother moo :)... love it!

And here is her calf. I had to help the babe suck. But the Curly was nice to work with, so it wasn't so bad. As you may or may not have already noticed, we put pink tags on the girl calves (heifers) and blue on the boys (bulls).

This cow is Spinner. She got her name because when she had her first calf and Dad was helping her... she spinned in circles, no joke.

She had her calf on her own while we were in church on March 20th.

Another bull! He is our first and only calf so far with true Hereford markings.

This is ABS. Her name means "All By Self"... can you guess? Yuppers, she had her first calf all by herself :) She did the same this year the morning of March 21st.

Here is the calf. We had to bottle feed it cholesterol because it needed help sucking and mama was to nervous to let us help her. So we gave it milk, and then sent it back out to ABS with some energy. That's all she needed to get sucking on her own.

Here is Teardrop! Her name comes from the brown "tear" on the right side of her face. I also found her calf the morning of March 21st.

Here is her SWEET calf... our first totally brown one!

I forgot to take a picture of #5 (yup, she has a number for her name... I'm assuming that she used to have a tag with that number on it), but I did get one of her calf born March 21st. Her tag is not sideways on purpose, it's like a earring and they move very easily :) I think this calf kinda looks like a bunny... what do you think?

I was with the cow when she gave birth. She lay down on a slight hill with her feet pointing uphill. I didn't think of it while she was having her calf, I just was concentrating on making sure that the calf was born safe. Once it was born I realized that #5 couldn't get back up! She had tipped on her back to far and if cows are tipped like that for to long they can bloat and die. So I "encouraged" her to get up by pushing and yelling :) She finally made it up by wiggling herself sideways on the hill and getting up from their. It was a good thing I had been there cause even though she may have eventually got up on her own, the calf still had the sack unbroken around it (I had broken it when I was pulling the calf out) so it probably would have suffocated before the mother had a chance to break it. So... ya I was just glad that everything worked out.

The calf needed help with sucking cause her mommy's bag is HUGE. This was one time that I was SO thankful that cows eat their afterbirth. It takes them a LONG time and they usually stand pretty still when they are eating it. Since the cow wasn't very nice, this allowed me to help her calf easier.

This is Patch and her calf born on the 22nd. She is named for the Patch on her face (obviously :). I'm not sure what happened to the calf's ear but as you might be able to see, the one with the tag in it is kinda droopy, poor lil guy looks so sad :(

He needed help with sucking as well. Patch did NOT want to co-operate, so I spend most of my afternoon trying to get her to stand still! But all's good now! :)

This is Molly. Her name came from Amanda Munck! She had her calf while her and her family were out here last spring... I needed a name, and she had one :) I took Nathan with me to check the cows a couple times and he kept forgetting her name and calling her Charlie... silly boy :)

I think her calf is my favourite so far... just look at that sweet lil face :)
She was born on March 23rd and also needed help sucking, but Molly was just WAY to nervous. So we ended up having to bring her into the barn and feeding her chop to get her to stand still. Dad helped the calf suck.

And this is our newest addition! Logo had her calf early this morning.
The name Logo might seem kinda strange to you eh? Well, she has a look-alike that is named Pogo, so Dad wanted to give her a similar name, since Logo rhymes with Pogo... Logo it was!