This is the fabulous sight that greeted us when we returned from walking the dogs this morning. It was just gone midday and this chap (it being a bull calf) cannot have been more than an hour or so old. Parsley had shown NO Sign this morning that the birth was imminent. She came out of the collecting area onto the main field as normal, her back end seemed no more ‘slack’ than it was last night and her teats did not look massively full either. And yet, just three hours later, it was all done and dusted!! Our time spent with just Parsley over the last two weeks, as well as the many hours we have spent with all five of them since last September, has meant that on the whole we have fairly trusting cows. Jack was able to go into the field shelter and check the calf over without Parsley getting too stressed at all. She was a little bit more anxious when David came to look as well, simply because there were then two of us, plus David is the one she knows the least. Animals do distinguish between people and they do get to know and trust individuals, cows perhaps are even more tuned in to their specific ‘keepers’ in this way than sheep or goats!!
The other amazing thing was how clean the shelter was. Parsley had obviously come in to give birth but there was precious little wet straw and when she did pass her afterbirth, the vast majority of it then ended up being eaten! There are two theories as to why animals do this: one is that there is a nutritional value to it and secondly, in the wild, leaving signs of a birth will attract predators and so the mums will clean up and then move ‘babies’ on so they are not as vulnerable. Parsley’s back end was also very clean and it was hard to tell she had just given birth!!
A good start to our calving then. We will need to castrate in the next couple of days and we will be using the rubber ring method – as explored back on the 17th March there are different ways to castrate and lots of issues re welfare and management. We will give a further update in due course!!!