The action picked up considerably yesterday. We had eight cows produce nine babies--yes, a set of twins arrived, much to the consternation of the mother! She seems a bit confused but doesn't seem to be fighting either of them so we're keeping our fingers crossed that they'll be okay. We don't have another cow to put one on right now.
R did his check through the calving pasture just before dark last night and found two calves. One cow was alternately licking and kicking her calf so he tried to get them to the barn. The cow wouldn't follow the calf on the sled so he tried to chase the cow to the barn, and she wasn't having any of that either. Rather than leave the calf in a snowbank he put it just inside the windbreak to see if the cow would eventually come to it. We went over about an hour later, and she hadn't come to the calf so we put it in the barn and gave it a bottle. It was a good sucker, but I was really hoping it wouldn't think I was it's mama. This morning we got her chased in although we had to bring a few more cows along with her to get her in. M put her in the maternity pen to give the calf an opportunity to suck without her kicking at it. That seemed to go okay, so now they are in a pen in the barn. She seems interested in the calf and isn't kicking at it, and the calf is aggressive enough that they should get along just fine. She's just a bit high strung whenever people are around. That might wear off after a day or two.
With all the monkeying around with cows and babies and chopping and filling up the feeders, we were still home by 9:30. Yes, I need a nap........
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