The heifers finally started picking up on their calving this last week. They were definitely not cycling when the bulls were turned out last spring. Nothing I can do about that, it's just the breaks. We have been busy though keeping up on things. It has really been tiring.<br />n<br />nThe weather has been nice for calving but as with everything involving the weather, it could be better. It gets just warm enough every day to create a lot of mud then it freezes at night and sets the mud up. The ground never dries up so the heifers have very little good ground to calve on. What a pain.<br />n<br />nDid have the first casualties this last week. Two calves lost on one cow. I don't know what it is, but if I have a cow with twins in her she is more likely to give me trouble than any other one around for some reason. This particular case was a little weird. The heifer never seemed to have any contractions. I noticed her acting a little odd in the evening, not real calvy, but like she was going to calve within the next 12 hours or so. By the morning she still hadn't started to calve but you could tell by looking at the discharge from her that something was going on so I decided to investigate. When I reached in to figure out what was going on I knew there was trouble. She was fully dilated, but I could barely reach the calf, meaning that she wasn't having contractions to push the calf up in the womb. I reached in as deep as I could go and finally snagged a front foot of the calf and started pulling it up. I could tell by the way the way it felt the calf was dead, I hate pulling dead calves, it makes me feel bad. I worked for the longest time but I never could get another leg or the head or anything, all I had was one front leg. I finally decided the only way I could save the heifers life was to take it in and have a vet get it out, another thing I hate to do with a dead calf but what option did I have?<br />n<br />nThe Vet tried to get the calf out just like I did and was having the same problem. He had a pharmaceutical solution though, Pitocin (SP?), causes the critter to have contractions. She started having enough contractions to push the calf up and get a hold of the one leg and the head finally. He pulled the calf out this way. He them reached in and found another calf in there. It was so far down in the womb he couldn't get a hold of it so it was time for more Pitt and the contractions finally pushed it up enough to get a hold of. He then pulled it out. He said by looking at the condition of the bodies the calves were more than likely dead for a couple of days. Why she never had any contractions was beyond him. I guess the hormone that starts such things was missing.<br />n<br />nWhen you have as many cows as I do around here you can expect this kind of thing to happen once in a while. I don't have to like it, but you have to accept it. Otherwise you will go nuts.<br />n<br />nThe cows should start calving here before to much longer. Spring work will really start taking off then. Things to do and cows to calve. If I just had help that was worth a damn around here I would really be looking forward to it. The way it is, I will just struggle through.<br />n<br />n<strong>The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. Albert Camus</strong>