Cow adventures

The vet’s been coming quite a lot these days.

First time he came was to check if the young cow are pregnant with calves. So began the morning adventure of getting the young cows into the cow house. Coz unlike the milking cows which do the same procedure twice a day, the young cows are not used to going into the cow house, much less walking into an individual stall to be buckled in.

After the morning milk was done and the milking cows had left for the field, it was time to get the young cows in. First thing was to try to get them to walk towards the direction of the cow house. On hindsight, that must have been the easiest part. So all I had to do was to chase them in the right direction.

Then it started to get difficult when some young cows didn’t want to get into the cow house. All they had to do was to walk through the door and they’d be in. But they had to sniff around first, stone a little, sniff more and then just stand there. I’ve come to realize that cows in general are very curious animals. Give them something new and they’d have to check it out. Check it out till they are totally satisfied then they’d move on. So they stand there and sniff at everything. Since it was their first time going into the cow house, of course they’d be pretty scared and so there had to be a lot of gentle coaxing, if they wanna stand and sniff, then we just had to stand there with them and let them take things at their own pace.

We had to get 8 cows in. 5 went in with relative ease and 3 just wouldn’t go in. They went as close as being 10m from the door and then they stopped. Inge and I had to corner them so that they would not walk back to the field and then we had to try pushing them in the direction of the door. But they just stood there most of the time and no matter how much we pushed, they didn’t move.

Inside, the remaining young cows were circling the cow house bumping into the few milking cows which were already inside (they needed to be checked by the vet too, so we didn’t take them out). All the cows were probably anxious and didn’t know what was going on, and so they kept moo-ing and moo-ing away. Which was just great, coz the added chaos was probably keeping the 3 cows from daring to take a step into the cow house.

After much coaxing and pushing, we finally got all the cows in by bribing them using cow feed. Next thing to worry about was trying to get them into the stalls to be buckled up. Not all of the 8 cows needed to be checked, so we only had to get a few in. coz of the different styles of buckles as well as the limited collars there were, there were only a few specific stalls which they could get into.

The way to get a cow going in the direction you want is to block all the other ways they shouldn’t move to, so they only have one route to take. Unni, Inge and I tried to corner the cows to get them to move into the stalls. When that didn’t work, we brought in the animal feed as well as fresh grass to bribe them into moving. Being cornered definitely is not a good feeling. Coz some of the cows were getting confused and stressed and just tried to charge their way through. Thing about charging young cows is that when it wants to charge right past you, you let it charge right past you. Young cows have much more explosive power than the more mellow milking cows, and so you let it go wherever it wants and get the hell out of its way.

In the end, turns out that the best method was using fresh grass to bribe them into the stalls. It must have taken us more than an hour to get all the cows in. After that was done, more grass was brought for them to eat and then the wait for the vet.

The vet came in the late afternoon to check on the cows. He stuck his arm right up all the cows’ ass to check if there were baby calves inside. Ewwwww! Not to mention, OUCH!!! Good news was that all 6 of the cows were pregnant. So at least we know that there’s gonna be milk for the next year!

After the vet was gone. It was time to let the cows out. Considering their behaviour in the morning, we’d thought that they’d be darn happy about going back out in the fields and would charge right out the door.

WRONG!

We unbuckled them and nothing happened. Again, they just stood there. It took some guiding and pushing to get them as far as the door and it was as far as they’d go. In the end, Inge had to put a harness round them and drag them out of the door, whilst I pushed from the back.
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The following day, the vet came again to inseminate 2 milking cows. Insemination is pretty fast as the vet just takes a really long thin tube and just inset it up the cow’s ass and it’s done. Trick about insemination is knowing when to do it. The timing’s got to be right, not too early and not too late. The best way of knowing when a cow needs insemination is when they start to jump on top of each other. Here’s a fact. When they do so, it’s the cow at the bottom that needs insemination, not the one which jumps on top of her.

Anyway, it’d be another 6-8 weeks before the vet comes again to check if the cows are indeed pregnant with calves. By then I’d be gone already!

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With all this baby talk going on, you’d think that I’d be hanging around long enough to see a calf birth.

WRONG AGAIN!

So many pregnant cows but none of them are gonna give birth the whole of September! The last time a cow gave birth was the day I arrived on the farm for work. A few hours too late. Next month there’s gonna be 2 births. And I won’t be around on the farm to see! *HMPH*

Looks like I just gotta come back next summer to see then!

ARHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!