On Feb. 27 we bought a bull from Ulrich Herefords. It was the last bull sale for Peter Ulrich and we wanted to get the chance to have some more Ulrich Hereford bloodlines in our small registered Hereford herd.
We were not able to attend the sale due to the weather, so Gregory talked to Peter and was able to bid over the phone. We are very excited about our new bull.
Early March brought in another blizzard and more snow. It snowed so much on March 2 that mass was cancelled on Sunday, so we bundled up and walked to John and Barb’s to watch the televised mass. After brunch, Gregory went to work trying to clean up the corral. The poor cows had trails around the edge of the corral and their bedding was under almost two feet of snow, so Gregory took the snowplow and the front-end loader tractor and moved as much snow as he could out of the middle of the corral. He then bedded the corral heavily.
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We had put a calving cow in the calving pen earlier, so before I took the kids home, I decided to check the cow. The cow was straining very hard with nothing to show for her efforts, so I got Gregory and we put the cow in the head catch to see what was going on. When I examined her, all I could feel was the tail. Gregory has longer arms, so we switched positions and he worked on trying to get the feet pulled back.
The calf never resisted us once, so we were sure we had already lost the calf. Thanks to all the new snow, we knew that no one would be able to come and help us, so we worked at trying to straighten out the back legs so we could pull the calf and try to save the cow.
It was quite the challenge, but finally we got the calf out. As Gregory went to pull the calf away it suddenly raised its head and started breathing. We were both shocked but quickly got to work clearing the airways and drying the calf off. The cow was in rough shape, so we took the calf to the house to feed it colostrum.
We expected a slow calf after such a slow birth, but the calf was very lively and was trying to get up right away. The linoleum floor was too slippery for the calf and so we took her to the barn after she was dried off and warmed up. I fed the calf for two days as we waited for the cow to recover enough to be able to take care of her. On the third day we put them back together and we had an incredibly happy cow and a very satisfied calf.
The day after we pulled the breech calf, we had a cow who decided that the bedded area was too nice and she had her calf in a snowbank on the edge of the corral. It was still quite cold, around –30 C, and Gregory had spent most of the morning in the corral. He came back to the corral after stopping at the house to warm up a bit and found the newborn calf in the snow. He rushed it to the shop and we tried to dry it off and warm it up, but it was just too cold. It’s always frustrating when you lose a calf, but it is more so after putting so much effort into everything.
On the 20th we got a surprise that made us feel better. At mid-afternoon I put a cow in the calving pen who looked like she may have been in early labour. She wasn’t showing any real signs but she looked suspicious to me. Gregory looked at her later and she wasn’t doing anything at all, but he left her in the pen so I could check her again before letting her out and called it a practice run. When I went out to check on her after supper, I found she had in fact been in early labour and hadn’t just had one calf, but two! We had not suspected this cow of carrying twins and so it was a very happy surprise to find two healthy calves.
A week later another cow surprised us with twins. Thank God Gregory checked her just in time to save the second calf, which had its head folded underneath itself and would have suffocated.
On Easter Sunday we celebrated mass, then had brunch at John and Barb’s. Barb had us and three of Gregory’s sisters and their families over for supper that evening. We had more good luck when Gregory was able to get the sack off a veiled calf that a heifer had after Easter supper.
We truly are blessed and no matter what challenges we face, we can never forget how much our dear Saviour loves us. Happy Easter from our family to yours.
