This was originally posted on The Daily Coyote in December 2009; I am reposting here for the sake of continuity & keeping essential Daisy/Frisco details on this site!

Daisy had a baby. Oh, how does one start this kind of post? So much to say! I have been rather preoccupied for the past two weeks, meaning, I’ve thought of little besides Daisy, her baby, and when she was going to calve. I knew I didn’t need to be there. This is Daisy’s third calf; in theory she knows what to do. But I wanted to be there, very much so.

I felt confident she wouldn’t calve in the night because I’ve been feeding her in the evening ~ I have no idea why this practise isn’t more accepted, but if you feed cows in the evening, they generally calve during the day. Mike is the only one I know in the area who feeds at night and he’s the only one who isn’t night-checking every two hours throughout calving season!

However, the only signs I knew regarding the prediction of a cow’s calving were for beef cows. As their udder fills, preparing for the calf, the wrinkles pop out, and when the last wrinkle between the two halves (as viewed from the back) pops out, you know the calf is coming within 24 hours or so. There are other signs, but the udder is a key sign for “Oh! It is very close!”

With Daisy, I had no idea what to look for. Her udder got very full while still maintaining the back wrinkle, but I thought, perhaps, since her udder already had far more milk than a beef cow’s, that maybe it wouldn’t fill all the way before the calf came. So I was on alert. Then her udder filled more and the wrinkle popped out. So I was on high alert. Then the udder kept growing, filling more and more and poofing out the back! Now I know for next time. Calf doesn’t come until udder gets gigantic:

Daisy had her calf at about 7am on Friday morning. It was a mild morning, relatively speaking, and soon became the warmest, most beautiful day of the month. Hallelujah! The calf was wet and shivering immediately after the birth but Daisy licked it off as she should – licking the sac from its face so it could breathe, then its body to dry it off. I couldn’t stand the shivering so I got a towel and a small space heater and used them both to help Daisy dry the calf, using the the heater like a hair dryer, rubbing the calf with the towel, then making a tent with the towel, with the heater and the calf under it – a warm pocket until the sun got strong.

After the calf is dry and warm, it is up to the calf to get up and drink the colostrom (first milk) which it needs to survive. This part was so gnarly…. I wanted to carry the calf to Daisy’s udder but that’s just not the way it works. Plus, this newborn weighs about 15 pounds less than I do (that should give you an approximation of how huge Daisy is!) and I couldn’t carry it. The calf tried to stand several times and toppled over ~ I was holding my breath for close to an hour. Finally it stood halfway up and I stood behind it, so it could lean against my legs as support, and we just stood there for a while.

After about half an hour of standing and taking a few tentative steps without falling, the calf made it over to Daisy and started nosing around for a teat. It found one and latched on. I was about to breathe easy, for once the calf is warm, dry, and has it’s first drink, everything is pretty much in the clear. But no. Daisy kicked it away. The calf tried again, and Daisy kicked at it again.

I really didn’t think this would happen after Daisy raised the bull last summer – she had kicked him away, too, for about a week, but then adopted him and let him suck, and the rest is history. But Daisy kicked away her newborn. I was SO angry at her…. but then I realized it’s not her fault – she was raised on a dairy farm, where they take the babies away immediately after birth. The mother cows get milked by machines, as usual, and their milk is bottlefed to their babies. So Daisy really didn’t know. And there’s always plan B.

Right about this time, Daisy expelled her placenta/afterbirth and immediately started gobbling it up. Obsessive, single-minded consumption of her gigantic placenta. Yes, it’s very gross but also very beautiful, that this herbivore will eat bloody tissue that came out of her own body to save her baby: if the placenta was simply left on the ground (in the wild), it would surely attract predators.

So, while Daisy was chowing on her placenta, I sat down and started milking into a calf bottle, which is like a baby bottle but holds 1 litre and has a really big nipple on it. And Mike showed up. So I milked, and fed the calf most of the bottle, and then Mike helped maneuver the calf over to one side of Daisy’s udder while I continued to milk on the other side, and the calf latched onto a teat. And Daisy let it drink. She just needed a reminder of the familiar with the introduction of the new, I think.

I may as well add the obvious here, the calf is black. In this land of Black Angus Beef, my solid white Brown Swiss and Jersey (both typically butterscotch brown breeds), who was bred to a black and white spotted Holstein, produced a black calf. Major eye-roll to the gods on that one. But this baby’s coat is not just plain black. It’s black mixed with equal amounts of silver – a black roan. (Which doesn’t exist technically, I just invented it.) I am quite curious to see what this coat evolves into as the months go by.

And then the sun got strong and so, so warm, and Daisy and her new baby and I were able to relax. I left them together to bond in the straw and went with Mike to feed his cows, and sitting in his truck, feeling safe and happy about everything, I felt like I was finally starting to thaw after having been frozen with tension for so long. Mike got out to open a gate and I relaxed against into the seat of the truck and this song came on the radio. One of my favorite songs……. And I realized this male calf’s name is Frisco.

Frisco. For me, the name conjures the image of a burly man with an anchor tattoo and a heart of gold. After knowing this calf for a day, the name fits him perfectly. And it’s a nod to what got me here.

la grande odalisque

Daisy, the day before she calved. December 17, 2009

Cow Q&A

This was originally (similarly) posted on The Daily Coyote in October 2009; I am reposting here for the sake of continuity & keeping essential Daisy details on this site!

What kind of cow is Daisy?
Daisy is 3/4 Brown Swiss and 1/4 Jersey.

Though the baby bull calf has seven names, is one of them most prominent?
Unfortunately, no. Mike and I cycle through all of them at random, and most of the time, I just call him Baby. Which is now what he answers to, and he trots over when I call out “Baby.” My soon-to-be 2000-pound Baby….

Is Daisy pregnant?
Daisy was bred (pregnant) via a Holstein bull when I bought her from the dairy and she is due to calve in December 2009. Sad, sad days are upon us, for next week I must wean Baby and stop milking – this gives Daisy a rest period before she calves so she can focus on the baby inside her.

To make the weaning less traumatic, I’ve been separating Daisy and Baby at night for the past few months – side by side in adjoining sections of the corrals, with just a simple pole fence between them. This way, they can see, smell, communicate, and even touch eachother, but Baby cannot suckle.

When it comes time to wean, I will give Daisy full run of the pasture and most of the corrals and put Baby in with Houdini, Mike’s 26-year-old horse (and the horse that peed on me, if you’ve read my book), who is in another section of the corrals getting special treatment (extra food, better shelter, etc). Daisy and Baby will still have through-the-pole-fence contact, and Baby and Houdini will have the opportunity for some quality male-bonding.

Why are you keeping Baby a bull? Don’t you know bulls are dangerous? You’re going to get hurt. I know someone who was gored by a bull.”
While I appreciate the concern, these emails remind me of the emails I got two years ago stating: “that coyote is going to kill your cat and eat your face off in the night.” Charlie hasn’t eaten my face off because a) I never forget he’s a coyote, and b) I spend a ton (TON!) of time working with him. Likewise, I never forget Daisy is a 1,200-pound animal. For as sweet as she is, she could give me a black eye with her tail while swatting at a fly if I didn’t watch myself. She’s angelic but she could break my bones. And the same goes with the bull.

This Spring, one of Mike’s bulls tested sterile, a fatal flaw in a herd bull. Since Mike was rather overwhelmed with the idea of having to buy a new bull immediately, I suggested he lease a neighbor’s bull for the summer and then use Baby. Baby will initially breed heifers the summer of 2010 (”heifers” = females that have not had a calf, like “maiden;” once they have a calf, they are “cows”). Once he reaches his full size and weight, he will breed cows.

Do you groom Daisy and Baby?
Yes! They love being brushed. It’s the only time I ever see them being rude to eachother – they will push eachother out of the way for more one-on-one time with the brush.

Do they have shelter?
Yes! Though I must say, these animals are tough. When I first moved to Wyoming, I had Mike’s two horses in the pasture at the house I rented. One day a huge storm blew in. I led the horses into the garage so they would be out of the weather. The horses were as baffled as my neighbors. That said, all the animals have shelter at the corrals, and one section is fully enclosed and heatable. This is where Daisy will have her calf and where I will milk during the cold winter and wet spring months.

If you have more cattle Q’s, leave them for me in the comment section and I’ll do another round ~ in the meantime, you can find more pictures of Daisy and Baby here, here, and here!