Terrabyte Farm

Jamie had gone out to the coop to get some eggs this afternoon and she noticed that one of our cows (the one we call “Big Momma”) had gone into labor.  She could see a hoof and a tongue. She got me and after a couple hours, laboring was going well but the calf wasn’t emerging despite some pretty immense contractions.  She came back in the house to get a bite to eat and then went back out with gloves and rope in case she needed to intervene.  She’d hoped that maybe the time she was in the house the cow would have had her calf.  Then, I came out and saw Jamie with her hands in the cow assisting, saying “we’re going to need to pull”.  We tried a couple different positions and tried to time our work to when the cow was having her strongest contractions.  Finally, with Jamie sliding her hands over the top of the calfs hands and me pulling on the calf’s legs, the calf pulled out half way.  I stopped to take a picture/movie, expecting the calf to come all the way out.  But it didn’t, so we had to give it another big pull.  We were worried about the state of the calf, because the whole time its tongue had been sticking out and was blue.  But Jamie got it to rouse pretty quickly.  The cow birthed the afterbirth and within an hour the calf was on his feet nursing.

If you want to see some more pictures and movies, be sure to check out our Labor & Deliver set at Flickr.