"Pull It"

Say what?!

A couple of days ago we had a beautiful day and everyone was super busy.  M was at Opheim seeding, R was north of Glentana rolling, and in between running for the guys I was planting some flowers that my sister-in-law had given me.  It was getting close to 5:00 when it occurred to me that I hadn't checked the cow cams to take a look at the heifers.  I had been over there around noon making my daily check to make sure that we didn't have any more sick calves.

We only had three heifers left to calve, and we've all been so busy with farming that we had kind of lost interest.  I checked the cow cam and there were one, two.....where's the third one?  I panned over a bit and there she was on her side with feet out and not moving much.  In a panic, I jumped in the pickup to head over to see if she was alive.  On the way I tried to call R, no answer.  Then I tried to call M, no answer.  And I'm thinking what do I do, what CAN I do?  Who else can I call?

Just as I got to the corral I finally got R on the phone and told him I thought we had trouble.  When I got to her she jumped up.  Oh good, not dead!  She had been lying right by the gate into the shed, but she jumped up so fast that I wasn't able to get her in there.  I made a few attempts to get her in to no avail.  I didn't want to chase her around the corral too much and get her all worked up.  R told me to go to the house and let her settle down, watch her on the cow cam and hope that she had it without a problem.  He wasn't near his vehicle and didn't think I had time to drive the 20 miles to get him and get back.

M was working about 40 miles from here and when I finally got him on the phone and explained the situation he said, "you're going to have to pull it since we don't know how long she's had feet out".  I'm sure I got real quiet on the phone.  He assured me I could do it since I'd helped him many times and knew what to do.  J was on the tractor by my house so I called him and told him I needed help.  He got real quiet also when I told him what we needed to do.  He's not a fan of cows and isn't around them too much.  He's probably been around when we've pulled a calf, but it's definitely been awhile.

As we're driving over, J says to me "do you know what you're doing?"  I assured him that I did and just needed him to help me a little.  It took us a couple of tries to get her into the back pen and then she entered the barn at about 50 mph!  She was a little excitable, but we actually got her into the maternity pen and head gate with no trouble and went to work.  I went in and got the chains on and then we pulled.  I elected not to use the puller thinking that J was big and strong and shouldn't have much trouble.  In hindsight that probably wasn't the best decision because it was a pretty tough pull.  J had to put his whole self into it, and I would not have been able to do it by myself.  I'm happy to report that mother and baby are doing well and J and I are pretty proud of ourselves.

Lesson learned, and I have been keeping a better eye on the cow cams!  These last two heifers need to just hurry up and get it done.