1016: First Calf

I’m a little disappointed with the photos above and had to revert to black & white because the ISO setting on my camera was set for moon shots (night shooting).

I had just fed these first-calf heifers and went to start the pump up the road for stockwater in another field, letting it run while I went down the road to move my water on the irrigated pasture when I noticed 1016 laid-out under a tree beginning labor. When I returned 45 minutes later, she had a little balloon of placenta showing beneath her tail as I went back up the road to turn the pump off. On the way back, I checked her and she was minutes from calving, grabbed my camera and joined her. These are 10 of 128 photos, all over-exposed, in about 30 minutes.

Normally the heifers go off by themselves to calve, but she was in a crowd. Normally they calve lying on the ground. She struggled quite awhile with the head out and the calf’s shoulders bound in her pelvis. Once by the shoulders, she thought she was done and stood up. When the calf hit the ground, its feet broke through the placenta but its head was still covered. I waited a couple of minutes to see what she would do. It had quit breathing by the time I pulled the placenta off the calf’s head. She, of course, ran off to the bunch, thinking I had done something to her. I pumped the calf’s chest once and it began to breathe again.

After I got out of the way, she came back to the calf, licking the daylights out of it while it tried to stand. It took awhile, but she finally let it suck. It’s got to be confusing for a first-calf heifer, despite their incredible instincts.