A tough day for Rosie (and us)

Rosie is our Jersey cow who is expecting her second calf on December 16th.  Cows have a 9 month gestation period, just like humans.  Here's a nice picture of Rosie right here:


Rosie Girl

A few mornings ago (I didn't want to talk about it at first), I walked out and saw Rosie standing by the round bale of hay with a lot of chickens around her.  I didn't think anything of it at first - until I saw the brown lump on the ground by her.  I felt a funny feeling in my stomach.

I walked up to see at Rosie's feet a perfectly formed baby Jersey bull calf, but one month premature... and dead.  Rosie's motherly instincts had kicked in and she had cleaned him all up, but he was not breathing.  You know, we're still at a loss to explain what happened.  Rosie was in excellent condition.  We just don't know what happened and probably never will.  But we'll try to read up on possible causes and figure out what went wrong and learn.

Russ and I promptly went to the garden, grabbed two shovels and dug a big hole underneath where we had the cow peas planted and buried Rosie's little bull calf right there in the garden.  Daisy, Rosie, Maggie and all of the chickens watchd us dig the hole, put the calf in and cover him with dirt.  It's kind of funny how we try to ascribe emotion to animals.  It seemed like the whole barnyard was in mourning.  Of course they weren't, but it sure seemed like it.  I know we were sad, but we tried to put it in perspective.  We'll keep pushing forward.  Yes, eight months was a long wait and now it's been in vain.  She only had one month to go - so darn close.  Now we'll have to start all over again.  Tough, for sure, but there are worse things that could happen.


A resting place for Rosie's little calf

Now one thing that we noticed is that when the bull calf was born, labor must not have gone as planned.  At the end of the day, the placenta was still hanging outside of her.  Normally, they'll continue in labor and deliver the placenta and promptly... eat it.  Yes, gross.  Rosie's labor seemed to have stopped and a full day later the placenta was still hanging out of her.  We called the veterinarian and he came and looked at it, concerned at first over our description on the phone that it may be something called prolapse, but it wasn't.  He wanted to give it a full six days and then if it was still there he would do a procedure on her.  I think the procedure involves injecting her with a hormone to induce labor to expel the placenta and then giving her antibiotics to ward off infection.  We want to avoid that, if possible.  We'll keep a close watch and call him back in a few days.  Here is an unflattering picture of what I'm describing:

Placenta hanging out between her tail and body

One other thing that is odd about this, and maybe this is due to the premature labor and delivery, but Rosie did not have a full bag of colostrum like cows normally do when they deliver.  I waited until the evening and tried to milk her.  I did get several squirts of colostrum out.  I kept working and working and finally seemed to get things flowing after what seemed like "plugs" were worked out of all four teats.  I've milked her out morning and night over the next few days and her milk seems to be coming in better now, although only about half as much as when Maggie was born.  Milk is produced based on demand.  I feel pretty certain that I can get her production up if I continue milking her frequently.

The tough part about this is that it is Russ' senior year, his last year showing Dairy Cows.  The livestock shows are in January.  Dairy cows are judged on their condition, especially the size of their 'bags'.  We're heartbroken over this for Russ.  However, we know that things like this happen from time to time.  We won't go crying over spilled milk or stillborn calves.  We'll chalk it up as a learning experience and move on.