Most Ridiculous. {{updated!}}

Daisy nursing Frisco.

Daisy nursing Frisco and TR.

At the same time.

Do you see the serene contentment in her face?

updated: OK, to address questions!
Frisco was born in December so he is almost ten months old. He most certainly could be weaned at this point and be just fine. TR is 1.5 years old, the same age as Sir Baby. He was weaned at about nine months, and spent the winter and spring with Sir Baby, eating hay like grown-up cattle. But when Sir Baby left to go earn his keep, TR and Frisco became best buds. And in late June, I saw that TR had taken Frisco’s example and was sucking Daisy. And Daisy was just fine with that. She is the sweetest.

They actually make my job easier ~ Daisy’s production has tapered off since Frisco’s birth but I’d estimate she’s still producing about 6 gallons a day. I milk one gallon in the morning and leave the rest for the boys to take care of.

Sir Baby has no interest in drinking from Daisy, though she still treats him like he’s her kiddo, giving him baths with her tongue, which he loves.

In February, I will separate TR and Frisco from Daisy. They will spend their time in a separate pasture with Sir Baby, Sunshine, and Houdini, while Daisy will be the den mother at the corrals for all the first-calf heifers who will be calving in March. I’ll stop milking at that time, too; this will give Daisy the opportunity to “dry off” for two months before her new calf is born. This allows her body to focus solely on her unborn baby and, as the time of birth nears, begin production of the essential colostrum.

Baby On Board!!!

Daisy is pregnant!

The vet came by yesterday morning to preg test her for the third time ~ attempts one and two via artificial insemination didn’t take and when the second try came up empty, I brought Sir Baby home and let nature handle it. It was getting too expensive and too late in the year to risk another unsuccessful go. (Daisy and Sir Baby are NOT related. She is his adopted mom. Just don’t think about it in human terms.)

After Daisy’s first round with AI, I called the vet and asked, quite seriously, “can I just buy a pregnancy test and hold it under her pee?” It’s a method that would make no sense for ranchers who run hundreds of cows that aren’t pets like Daisy, but it would be ideal for me. Oh, the laughter that came through the phone. No, a pregnancy stick just won’t work on a cow.

Instead, to determine if a cow is pregnant, the vet pays a visit at least 40 days after conception (or hope of conception). He puts on a long long long plastic glove that reaches all the way up to his shoulder. Then he sticks his hand…. oh, there’s no dainty way to describe this. He sticks his hand into her butt, scoops out any poop that might be in the way, and then reaches his whole arm in. From there, he can feel the uterus and can determine if the cow is pregnant and how far along she is. We’re going to have a May baby!

The last time the vet was here to preg test Daisy, he whipped out plastic gloves in a bright flourish ~ they were hot pink and he handed one to me. I immediately put it on. Neon pink plastic slid all the way up my arm, with the excess length forming a ruffle around my shoulder. Mike was with us at the corrals and he looked at me incredulously and said, “Are you gonna try it??”
“No,” I said, “it’s an accessory.”
“Ah,” Mike said, “like Lady Gaga.”

Is Daisy Pregnant?

No. Last week, I woke up from a very vivid dream about Daisy cycling ~ everyone was mounting her ~ even Ranger (my horse) jumped the fence to get to her and mount her. GAH!

That day, Daisy and another steer were inseparable. (A steer is a castrated male. He cannot get her bred but he will try.) He stood by her side even while she was napping. She stood for him midmorning which meant she was not pregnant from our first attempt and had to be AI’ed that evening for it to take.

However, The Caterpillar was out of the country. In Ireland. And the other woman in his office who does AI was off that day. So it didn’t happen. None of this really bothers me ~ I’m holding the faith that delaying her pregnancy is part of some grand design to avoid her calving during a horrible Spring storm.

Now I am armed with a pattern (and this is precisely why I should have been tracking Daisy’s cycles for the past five months) and can predict her next cycle. The vet will be back in town. It’s on the books. We’ll see what happens!

Wherein Daisy (Hopefully) Gets Knocked Up

It’s time for Daisy to get pregnant again! Frisco is five months old and is still “on the teat,” so to speak, and I am still milking ~ but this has nothing to do with Daisy getting pregnant again. In fact, if you notice the cycles of deer in the wild, you will know this is the way it works ~ deer have their fawns the first of June, nurse them through breeding season (November) when they become pregnant with another, kick their fawn off the teat the following spring when the new grass begins to grow, to give their bodies time to dry off and prepare colostrum for their new fawn, which is born at the beginning of June and the cycle continues. So, the fact that Daisy is actively raising a calf while forming another inside is normal and natural.

The only thing that is not totally natural is the timing. I am hoping to get Daisy bred now, instead of in the fall as the deer and elk do, so that she will calve the first of March, just before Mike’s cows do (cows have a gestation of roughly nine months). This way, Daisy will be able to provide colostrum and fresh milk should any of Mike’s cows have twins or abandon their babies. And for now, Mike calves in the early spring like the rest of the ranchers around here.

Daisy cycles every twenty-or-so days but there is just a tiny window of opportunity when she is READY to be impregnated. We are doing artificial insemination because, quite simply, there are no dairy bulls around here. And with AI, you can pick any breed of bull you fancy. Since I am hoping for a girl-calf this time, and since, according to both Charlie and myself, there is no such thing as too much cream, I chose sperm from a strapping Jersey bull. Daisy’s first calf was a heifer calf from a Jersey bull; her second calf is Frisco, via a Holstein bull. This will be Daisy’s third pregnancy, if it takes.

The key sign that Daisy is ready to be AI’ed is that she will stand for a steer (castrated male) as he mounts her. There are other signs. More nebulous signs. There is also a hormone one can give a cow to induce cycling but we’re going au natural. I should have been watching Daisy and taking notes since Frisco’s birth, tracking her cycles over the last few months, but that would have entailed planning ahead, and, well, I’m still learning how to be good at such sensible stuff. Therefore, I’ve been watching her obsessively ~ because this is my first time at this rodeo and because the man from whom I bought Daisy did mention that it was somewhat difficult to get her bred.

And so, after two weeks of watching Daisy, I saw on Saturday morning that she was standing, kind of, while being mounted by a steer. OK, it was Frisco. Banish your ewww thoughts. She was standing but kind of walking away so it wasn’t the exact stand I was on the lookout for, but it was very close. Her time was close. But I wasn’t sure how close. And it was Saturday morning and I knew I had my own very small window of time in which to reach my vet before Monday (Monday, which would surely ~ or at least perhaps? ~ be too late), as his office closed at noon on Saturday for the weekend.

My vet has been on standby for nearly a month and on Saturday morning I couldn’t get ahold of him. After a series of technical glitches far too boring to detail here but which felt, at the time, like one tragedy after another, I finally tracked him down on his cell phone late in the afternoon. By that point, I had crossed the threshold into panic and started blurting out everything, saying eight things at once, making no sense whatsoever, and he interrupted me and said, in his calm, singsong voice, “Do youuu know where I ammm right now?”

I wish you could hear his voice. It’s like the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. He IS the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. “No…” I answered, tentatively. “I’m in my rrrazberry patch,” he said. “Would you like some raspberries?”

I love raspberries, almost more than life, and so I momentarily ditched all thoughts of Daisy and my zealous blather became all about raspberries. “Alllright!” he said, “I’ll bring you some raspberry starts when I come to do Miss Daisy. I’ll see you tomorrow at eight.” Click.

OK, Caterpillar, whatever you say.

Eight to the Caterpillar means nine but I went down to the corrals at 7:30 to wait for him. I brushed Daisy from head to toe. I made her a fertility adornment which she wore for the procedure: three long blades of new green grass braided together and secured to her topnotch with a pink hair elastic. I paced around the corrals. And then it was time.

The entire procedure took less than five minutes. The vet took a thin straw of semen out of a huge tank filled with dry ice, warmed it in his armpit to get the swimmers swimming, and then gently threaded the straw through Daisy’s open cervix and set the swimmers free.

Daisy stood calmly, and that was that! I, however, was a wreck. I was hovering around while it was being done and after Daisy ate her fertility adornment and wandered off, and the vet left, I went home and drank warm milk in hopes of settling down. I was absolutely wound, and so very anxious. But this is just my cow. If she doesn’t end up pregnant with this try, we will try again, and eventually, I am certain, it will take. I simply cannot imagine enduring the tension and unknowingness and hope and chance that so many women must face each month in their own quest to get pregnant.

My heart goes out to those of you who are in the midst of living this yourselves.

Five Reasons To Have A Cow

Please note! By “cow,” herein, I mean cow {female} OR steer {castrated male}. Or bull, I suppose. Or if you’re like me, all three! I just don’t want to type cow/steer/bull/bovine/calf/heifer at every turn. Slap my hand.

It is my determination that a cow is a cross between a horse and a dog. This concept flickered to mind with Daisy, became an undeniable theroy with Sir Baby, and has been confirmed with Frisco. Dog + Horse = Cow.

1. Cows are smart. Somewhere along the way, cows were given the label of dumb beast and it is so far from the truth. Cows have incredible intelligence, especially in noticing and understanding patterns. Show a cow something a handful of times, and it becomes memorized.

When I got Daisy, I would gather her up from the field at roughly the same time each evening and lead her to the corrals for the night. A week or so into our time together, I got distracted and didn’t notice it had suddenly gotten late. Daisy knew. Daisy knew the time and the routine and she walked in from the far reaches of the field and stood outside my door and MOOOed, an insistent, un-ignorable, “Are we going to the corrals now, or what??” kind of moo.

2. Cows smell good. Cows do not smell bad. Maybe if they’re trapped in a feedlot they do, but that is a problem created by people, not inherent to the cow. Just as horses have a distinct and wonderful “horse” smell, cows have a distinct and wonderful “cow” smell.

Cows smell warm and sweet, like homemade pastry.

3. Cows are obedient. Daisy, Frisco, and Sir Baby all know their names. They come when called. They obey voice commands akin to a dog.

Sir Baby, my bull, comes up to me and rests his forehead against my leg when he wants a nice scratch. This is our “thing,” this is what we do. Last week, I was kneeling on the ground giving Houdini a belly rub and Baby lumbered over and rested his head against my shoulder in request for a scratch. I ignored him because I was with Houdini, and so Baby started nudging me with his head. Like, “hey, I’m here, did you not notice?” But however gentle, a nudge from a bull still makes you rock! I said, “No, Baby.” And he stopped, took two steps back, and waited for his turn. I don’t think this is abnormal. I think cows are really awesome.

4. Cows let you cuddle. I’ve always been a bit jealous of cats ~ the way they get to curl up in a person’s lap and be totally encompassed by another’s warmth and strength. With a cow, you get to be the cat. Because the cow is 10 times bigger than you are! It is an indescribably wonderful thing, to curl up in Daisy’s neck, or stretch out on Sir Baby with a good book while he chews his cud.

Cow therapy is the best therapy. Cows are love. You simply cannot stay in a hateful, anxious, or wounded state when you’re with a cow. Lean against a cow or brush a steer and your veins will soon course with love.

5. Cows have a secret bonus. Because of their massive size and strength, and because they aren’t terribly common as pets, cows can look quite intimidating to strangers. How cool would it be to have a 1500-pound steer guarding your home against intruders?!? He’ll even fertilize your lawn at the same time!