On Tuesday, October 4th I arrived at the farm under darkness at 5:30am. Although Indigo hadn’t shown signs the night before of getting close to calving, I walked up to the pasture to check on her. To my great surprise, through the light of my headlamp I could see a lively little (err, BIG!) calf standing up next to her. And to my even greater delight, it was a GIRL! We always hope for girls (heifers, as they are called) on a dairy farm because that means that they will grow up to become apart of the milking herd and stay with us for many years to come.

Since her mama’s name is Indigo, we wanted to stick with an “I” name for this sweet girl. We finally chose Ivory, based on her mostly white coat and the similarity to her mother’s name, both being colors.

Although Indigo is her biological mother and does a phenomenal job taking care of her, one of the other cows, Krimson, also took Ivory on as her baby. I call these two the “sister wives” and they share mothering duties and both let Ivory nurse from them.

Because Indigo and Krimson are both such protective mothers who keep a close watch over Ivory, I let her stay with the herd for the first month of her life. We have “calf shared,” meaning that I milk the cows every day, but Ivory can also nurse from them whenever she wants.

Two days after Ivory was born, on Thursday the 6th, I got a call from a concerned neighbor saying that there was “something hanging out of the back of a cow…. and it has hooves!!”

I went up to the pasture to check and sure enough Krimson was well on her way to pushing out a calf! This was a major surprise to me because I had no idea she was pregnant (farmer fail!)! Although I had bred her a few times over the past nine months, I didn’t think she had taken because we had ongoing health issues with her and trouble getting her to gain weight. I was in disbelief that there was a healthy calf inside her that whole time!!

Krimson pushed the calf out with little trouble… another girl!! She licked her off for about 5 minutes before promptly abandoning her and returning her full attention to Ivory. Although it was a balmy fall day, this babe was still wet and shivering, and the sun was quickly setting. The pasture would not be a safe place for her overnight with no mama to keep an eye on her.

We took her down to the barn where we dried her off and gave her a quart of warm colostrum from a bottle. This is the first milk that a cow produces after she calves and is full of very important nutrients and antibodies that need to be passed onto the calf within hours of it’s birth.

This little peanut has super long legs. Her legs and joints were a bit folded up and herky-jerky for a week or so after birth, simply because she was squished into a small space in the womb. This is not unusual for calves, and the body eventually straightens itself out with exercise.

I decided to name this sweet girl Klover, given that her mom’s name is Krimson. Krimson wants absolutely nothing to do with her, and even head-butted her into the side of the barn once. So Klover is my babe now and she gets lots of love, attention, and warm bottles of milk from us.

At a month old now, both calves continue to thrive under their own unique circumstances. I’m not able to link youtube videos to this blog post, but you can view a handful of videos from the first week of these girls lives on my channel by clicking here.

In October 2022 we welcomed two new calves to our micro-dairy herd! Allow me to introduce them and tell their birth stories below…