Farmer Writes: developing less tolerance for misery

No water from early Saturday morning wasn’t the greatest start to the weekend. It wasn’t what I wanted to experience as calving was on the horizon.

Notification time for its return went from that evening to Sunday morning and 10pm that night, before it eventually returned around 7pm.

It’s becoming a regular occurrence now, to the point where plans are afoot to set up backup tanks. Simple rainwater harvesting options are being considered too.

Calving got underway on Sunday morning, with a heifer kicking things off this year. She was in-calf to a homebred young bull and there’s always a bit of trepidation as to how they’ll get on.

I wouldn’t mind if all calvings were all like this one. There was nothing stirring early on, walking past them at 10.20am I spotted the legs and a nose appearing behind a heifer that had been springing, so I went away doing other jobs.

Returning five minutes later, I found her licking the calf and an audience of curious heifers had gathered around her, wanting to see what was going on.

They’re a very sober bunch of heifers this year and the one that calved would probably be the most nervous among them, so I left her and the calf in with the group.

They were bedded down again and I observed him sucking later.

I’ll move the pair to the other shed during the week. That might get the rest of the cows thinking about calving, although the way the weather is, it would be no harm if the rest held back for a week or so.

Like last year, all the in-calf heifers are in a house separate to the older cows.

Until then, it was always the first dozen or so regardless if they were cows or heifers that were picked out.

That was leading to more bullying and messing around and it added to the work too and, by accident rather than design, this system was discovered last year.

More often than not, if there’s an issue around a cow not taking to a calf, it’s with a heifer, so this allows them and me more space and reduces pressure.

The cows know what they’re at, so they kind of look after themselves and it’s more about observing than intervening, I’ve found.

Hindsight

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It’s not many years ago that my first instinct on seeing that heifer with the legs protruding out behind her, would be to move her straight away into the calving pens.

All that would do is upset her routine and extend the calving period.

The temptation was to intervene, which involved stalling them and messing around.

That would take up so much time and then when the calf was out, it felt like there was an instant need to get them up and get them to drink.

Since taking a few steps back and leaving nature do its own thing, the workload around calving has collapsed.

It’s a tie in terms of time, as it’s better to clear the decks and be prepared to step in if needed, but there’s not the same intensity like there used to be.

I can’t put my finger on exactly what triggered the change around it.

Maybe I’ve developed more cop on and less tolerance for misery as I’ve gotten older.

Either way, it’s the kind of stuff that I wish I knew more about when I was starting off farming.