Tiny Farm Blog Organic micro-farming with two acres and some tools ~ a daily photo journal...

After being there for their birth nine days ago, I couldn’t not keep track of these guys. For about a week now, during the days, they’ve been in one of the yards just outside the barn, eating, resting and ambling around, exploring. They do grow up fast. It was sunny, but icy cold today, with a bitter wind, but the cows seem unconcerned.

There was action in the barn in the wee hours today. A couple of the cows gave birth. Here’s the first new one, around five minutes after his 4 am delivery into the cold barn. This is the second time I’ve watched the whole thing unfold. The first was maybe a year ago. In both cases, human intervention was required, which consisted of Bob with a length of chain wrapped around a pair of calf’s feet, pulling. Last time, he explained it was a dry birth, where the embryonic sac breaks too soon, the head dries out, and, less lubricated, it sticks on the way out. A little feet-planted-firmly tug-o-war type pulling and…a new cow! This time was a little more complicated, a breech birth, with the calf turned right around so its back end was aiming out instead of the head. Particularly with first-time births, the mothers aren’t relaxed enough to let the bigger back end out first. So, the chain was wrapped around the hind legs and attached to a cable with a ratchet, in turn attached to a steel fence post set in concrete. The long-handled ratchet allows the cable to be pulled with more force than a person alone could manage, as long as the cow stays put and sets herself against the pull (which it seems to do, since I guess it too wants the baby out!). Anyhow, some minutes of pulling and then out popped the calf! There’s lots of bloody fluid and trailing bits, and the calf lies there at first like a limp, wet, bloody corpse. But the mother is right on it, licking away, and within minutes its head is up and peering around, and if all’s well, it’ll awkwardly stagger to its feet in under half an hour. Pretty cool! The second mother gave birth around four hours later. The first time watching all this was interesting, a little sensational with all the bloody fluid, the second time it’s simply…satisfying, another really basic part of life that most of us in the modern world just plain miss (we eat meat and drink milk, don’t we…well, a lot us do). I’m not sure about the breeding timing or anything like that, like, Why calves now? With Bob’s cows, I’m an observer, sometime consumer, occasional chaser.

Here’s the second calf, three hours after an 8am arrival, up and tottering around! Sturdy!! It’s fascinating to watch them rapidly get used to their legs, steadier by the hour.

We haven’t had much sun lately, but it came out for the top half of the day today. What a difference sunshine makes, if you have any choice at all, you certainly can’t stay indoors (especially in front of a computer!). In my slow and steady exploration of all the many parts of the barn not used in tiny farming, I snapped a shot of the silo at the south end, looking quite imposing in the bright light, kinda industrial, and still in good shape. This is an old concrete silo, about 40′ (12m) high, used mainly for silage (partially fermented crops used for livestock feed). It was last filled around 15 years ago, when this was a full-fledged dairy operation. Field corn was chopped up and blown up the tube on the left. Packed in, the corn would start to ferment, which helps preserve it for winter feed. Cows apparently love silage! At times, the silo was also used to store dried corn (the kernels) for feed. Hmmm, wonder how to reuse a silo…

Rampaging cattle! Well, more like, a few cows wandering into the field. This happened once before, three years back, and that time, the potential for disaster was a little greater. Unthinkably, TWO critical gates had been left open overnight, and around a dozen cows headed in at dawn. It was also around June, with a whole market garden full of new crops, there to be ravaged. Just by chance, the intruders were spotted early, and it took three sleepy people, lots of running, and a pick-up truck, to head ‘em out (it’s a 9 acre field). Luckily, the cows were most interested in the hay, on the way there trailing giant hoof prints down just about every bed in the garden, leaving the veggies otherwise untouched. So it turned out fine. This time, with most of the cattle gone from the farm, the remaining little posse of five cows and a bull, all friendly and laid back, made their way up an 11 acre pasture and slipped through the garden field gate in the four or five minutes when my eye wasn’t out there. I’d been using the Kubota compact tractor to move manure from the barnyard, about a dozen trips, with a few minutes of blind time each trip as I spread on the new garlic bed. Crafty, stealthy guys… There was a moment of sharp…concern as I eyed the wide open double gate across the field, leading to the side road and on to unfenced houses on the subdivision, and the wide open two-lane highway not far down. But the cows were absolutely fixated on the first lush patch of oats they encountered. With the other gates closed, herding them out went surprisingly smoothly. The whole adventure: 20 minutes! An interesting break…