Kat Dancing

Three more calves. Jam, who's nearly a week overdue, dropped a *massive* heifer yesterday . We've named her Doughnut, which inevitably leads to the nickname of Doh. It's unfortunately apt. Little Doh is not the brightest crayon in the box. She's also had various problems - we think she must have been pinched somehow in the birth canal, or stepped on, or something, because it took her twenty-four hours to be able to walk and usually they're on their feet within the hour. Severe coordination problems. When I left her last night she was only just getting the hang of sitting up instead of flopping around on her side and waving her legs in the air. I had to bottle feed her while she was still lying down just to get some colostrum in her. The colostrum, the shot of Vital E, and the time seem to have done her good, though - she was on her feet and walking this morning, although she's still a bit shaky and weird. But it looks like whatever was wrong with her was temporary. The lack of brain cells, unfortunately, is probably permanent, but she'll be all right. Stupid but sweet.

Zara finally had a bull calf last night - she'd been acting weird all day. Tried to claim Doh and tried to help eat Jam's afterbirth (cows are weird.) Then Dragon had a bull calf on Dad's 2 am shift. As I type this Cora is definately in labor and Tita may be. Things are picking up at last!

SimLife has been eating most of my spare time. I think my crayfish are going to learn how to walk soon....

Yesterday turned into one of those seemingly simple days that ends up being complicated.

The first hitch was at morning milking, when Sitar, one of the new heifers, decided to make a pain in the ass of herself. There was a bit of a ruckus which ended up with her tearing down a few lines of fence and ending up with the springers. Remember that. It becomes important later.

Dad decided not to get her out, since we were going to be running the springers up in the afternoon to get their selinium shots anyway. Now, this is a pretty simple task. Cow goes in the shoot, we catch her in the head gate, she gets a shot in the neck, she goes. It can get hairy because the older cows recognize the head shoot and want nothing to do with it, but in general, this is not a difficult thing.

Not today.

About three cows along the dog snapped at Freedom, the cow I was bringing in, and I turned around to yell at him. This just happened to be the point when my mother had turned around to go out and get some more cows in and my father had turned around to fill his syringe, and Freedom just happened to be the first cow who didn't balk at the headgate and instead thought something along the lines of "Fuck it, I'll just hit it as fast as I can instead," and Freedom also just happened to be a relatively young, small cow. Result? She managed to get not just her head, but her entire front end through the headgate before anyone caught on.

Now this is not a good position for a cow to be in. She'd managed to get that far because a cow's ribcage is sort of triangle-shaped, wider at the back than the front, and it does flex some, but the minute the bars of the gate got past her ribcage it'd sprung back to its full size. Therefore there was no way to back her up. And behind a cow's ribcage are her hipbones, the widest parts of her body and something which does *not* flex. Therefore there was no way she could go forward either. She was well and truly stuck and already having trouble breathing and, being a cow, she was panicking.

Dad yelled at us to hold her before she hurt herself and we did, and it's at this point I became very, very glad that we have Jerseys and not Holsteins. For one thing, a Holstein would have weighed twice as much. For another, the two breeds have completely different panic responses. A Holstein's response to a bad situation is to strike out with all four feet *and* her head and smash everything and everyone she can into kindling. A Jersey's response is to roll her eyes back in her head, stick out her tongue, and go limp. Passive resistance cows. Ghandi would have loved them.

So anyway, we're now trying to keep 500 pounds of cow upright, but at least we're not being mutaliated - well, she did stand on my foot, but only for a minute and a half, and she didn't break any toes. My dad managed to loosen some bolts on the gate and let her breathe, but the rest of the bolts were stuck in place. We were trying to hold her upright and force her ribs to fold back under the hinges of the gate at the same time while my dad beat on things and swore, and it looked for a long time like we were going to have to use the cutting torch to get her out, but finally something sprung enough for us to back her up. She promptly, and probably sensibly, ran away.

Nothing went right after that. The cows were antsy and nutty - I got rolled by one girl who suddenly decided she was *not* going in there, adding a bruised ass and a scraped palm and very nearly a lot of hoofprint-shaped bruises to my repoitare of injuries. One heifer charged the gate we were using to direct her into the headgate and actually made it through. And then Sitar (remember Sitar?) who we'd been saving for last so we could put her back in with the milking herd, went absolutely crackercow on us. She *cleared* the gate (almost) and went charging down the alley, breaking a perfectly good bungie cord we'd been using to hold the thing shut, and she tried to jump every single bloody gate she hit while we were bringing her back, and then, when we had her right up to the headgate, she decided to turn and jump the wall of the squeeze chute too.

It was at that point that her luck ran out. She'd overestimated her jumping ability, and rather than clearing the wall she made it about halfway across and flopped. She was now in just about as bad a position as Freedome had been in earlier. The wall was just short enough that she couldn't really fall in either direction, but just tall enough that she could only get one set of feet on the ground at a time. She ended up sort of kicking and bawling and weaving back and forth like a teeter-totter.

"Hold her nose," my dad snarled, and Sitar got her shot right there. Then Dad went in back of her and, with very much effort, managed to lift her back end over the wall, while Sitar bawled some more and squirted milk everywhere and I hovered helplessly. Nobody got hurt - either Sitar *or* my dad - but it was a bloody miracle.

The day went up from there, though. Lucy, who we knew was carrying twins, finally had them, and, miraculously, they were both alive, healthy, and *heifers*. Twin heifers are quite rare, so we were thrilled. Since Lucy's formal name is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds the twins have been dubbed Lil and Nancy, and Lucy looks like she's doing well too. Cows aren't really built for twins, so this is another minor miracle.

Oh, and Sitar is behaving *very well* in the parlour these days, and she hasn't tried to jump *anything*.

No calves when I got up in the morning, to my disappointment, but Robin went this afternoon while the parents were off visiting another dairy. The silly bitch decided to have hers standing up. This really isn't a problem - falling two feet and landing on your head does not actually seem to bother a newborn calf all that much, although usually I catch them if I can - but it's certainly the hard way if you're the mother. I kept giving her pep talks - "Go on, then, Robin, lay down. Just lay down, it'll be much easier. Go on..." but I, never having had a calf, was apparently not a reliable source of advice, and so she went splay-legged trying to stay upright through the heavy contractions. Bloody Jerseys. She had a nice little heifer, though. We've named her Lark.

The other six are now being trained to suck off the bucket feeder - this is, for the unintiated (translation: "those who do *not* smell of sour milk") basically a bucket with rubber nipples round the bottom. They're doing good, mostly, except for Scout, who is still in the I Will Die Sooner Than Eat mode (as I said before, bloody Jerseys) and Wanna's bull, who got left with his mother a little too long and is pining. I suppose I ought to feel sorry for him, but as "pining" translates to "bawling at the top of his lungs all day and night without apparently pausing for breath" my sympathy is limited. In fact, I want to strangle the little bugger, and if he doesn't straighten up within the next few days I *will*.

Compare this to Croissant, who, at a day old, is sucking so hard and so enthusiastically at her nipple that I sometimes think her eyeballs will implode. Why can't they all be like that?

Dull day other than that. Parents were gone, as mentioned, so I mostly putzed around on the net doing worldbuilding research for Harmony, which is what I do when I'm trying to avoid actually writing the thing. It works well. There's nothing like the 'net for killing time.

Woke up this morning to find my mother hauling one dazed, damp-looking calf out of the field while another lively one frisked around at her feet and an entire plethora of bawling, hormone-crazed cows galloping behind her. Memo to self: start getting up earlier. None, of course, of the rowdy plethora were the actual *mothers* of the two calves; those we had to round up from the far ends of the field where they were panicking, while Eclaire - who had just broke her water- got in the way and tried to take over the calves and kill the dogs and made a general nuisance of herself, and the lively calf danced around and got underfoot and tried to fall in the watertrough and made a general nuisance of *her* self. It was a bloody circus.

Things did eventually calm down, and milking wasn't half bad. The damp calf, Sitar's, was a bull; the lively one was a heifer. Her mother's name is Vera, but due to her behavior and us all having just watched "To Kill a Mockingbird" she was unanimously dubbed Scout. She's a handful for somebody less than a day old. Eclair took her time, fussing around and taking rest breaks, but eventually was delivered of a rather large heifer calf that we've named Croissant.

Back.

The short version of the news: finished my semester, flunked a class, currently taking two classes over the 'net so I can actually graduate and just finished doing 36 hours worth of service work towards the same lofty goal. Came home and began working for the parents. Started a new novel, Harmony Station, while continuing to stack up rejection slips on the last one. The new one is going well, though, even if I haven't been able to work on it for a while.

I must stop taking these unplanned hiatuses. The catch-up paragraphs are too stressful.

Yesterday the first calf of the 2003 calving season was born. Looks like it's going to be a funny year overall. I had just been saying to my dad, "I give Wanna (the cow) twenty-four hours," and I walked out and, splat, there she was with a calf. Same thing happened this morning. I came in (at eight - milking my late mornings for all they're worth while they last) and said, "Any more?"

"No," said my dad. Five minutes later I was phoning him from the field.

"Dad, you lied...."

Not his fault, really. There was a moment of panic when I thought Amelia'd had twins, but it turned out to be another cow, Didgeridoo, who'd calved as well. Jeez. Those were the only two today - both heifers (Wanna had a bull). We've named Amelia's Charlie, after an uncle of my mother's, and Didge's Oz because we're just about out of weird instrument names and figured we might as well branch out into Australian names. I was voting for Shiela, but there we are.

The rest of them are standing around out there, looking large and pregnant. I think if Eclaire sneezes she'll have a calf shooting out her bum. However, she hasn't slowed down eating yet, so she can't be too close - although knowing Claire she could be chewing right up to the point that the calf hits the ground.