To understand Eliza's calving story, you must first understand Eliza. She's…. unique. "Derpy" is the word I most often use. And don't get me wrong, we absolutely love her for it, but she's always been a bit "off" from the beginning. Her head is permanently tilted to one side, and she's always mulling about like she doesn't quite know what's going on. The wonderful woman I bought her from said that Eliza would do well at a small farm where she could get a bit more care and attention than in a bigger herd. So here she came to Maplebrook in the summer of 2021 as a first calf heifer.
Then in the spring of 2022, our vet confirmed her bred, with a calf expected in the fall. That day he also told me one of my other cows, Krimson, was not pregnant.
WELL... when Eliza's due date rolled around and she wasn't showing any signs of going into labor, I started to worry.
And then to my complete surprise, Krimson popped out a baby shortly thereafter! So there was a little mixup and a switcheroo in which it turned out Eliza was never pregnant and Krimson was all along.
Krimson with her 2022 calf, Klover.
After that I tried fervently to get Eliza bred and to get her back on track to join the milking herd again, now long into her dry period. After about 6 months I refused to give up on her and reached out to a fellow Sterling farmer to see if he'd be willing to let Eliza join his beef herd for the summer of 2023 with the hopes that his bull would breed her naturally.
We preg checked her in November and to my shock and disappointment, she still was not bred. Dave, being the kind and generous person that he is, told me he was happy to keep her over the winter and we could check her again in a few months.
So fast forward to this June and I knew that it was time to check Eliza one more time and make a final call on shipping her for beef if she was not pregnant. A heartbreaking prospect on a cow we'd all grown to love in her own unique way.
I'm a "prepare for the worst but hope for the best" kind of person, so I mentally prepared myself for sad news.
But to my complete shock, we found out she was indeed pregnant and due relatively soon.
The thing that made this pregnancy a bit different from all of my other cows', was that we didn't know Eliza's due date. She was bred by a bull and not with artificial insemination.
So we waited patiently as we watched her udder swell with milk over the last 2.5 weeks wondering if each day would be THE day.
Then finally mid-morning on Friday, August 9th, when Eliza's udder was a giant balloon that looked ready to burst, and with with milk leaking from her teats, we knew it was finally the big day.
We watched excitedly as she'd lift her tail up in the air and squeeze her belly with each contraction. She'd stand up for a bit, then lay down, then get back up again. She was licking the milk streaming from her teats, and was even spinning in circles at one point.
Finally we saw a hoof emerge. We want calves coming out in a "diving" position, with their two front hooves first followed by their head. I worried- was it a front hoof, or back? Where was the other?
Thankfully another hoof emerged a short time later, followed by the tip of a nose. We watched as Eliza would lay down, push with all her might, but fail to make progress in pushing the calf's head out. 99% of the time cows give birth completely on their own. It's actually best not to intervene, as that can cause more harm than good. So I waited. She got up and ate more grass. Time was ticking. Once labor starts there is a limited amount of time to get the calf out. If the umbilical cord breaks during labor, the calf can suffocate if stuck in the birth canal too long. Next time Eliza laid down, I pulled on the calves legs with each contraction to assist. It wasn't budging.
Eliza stood up again to graze, and wouldn't let us get close to her.
It was time to take serious action now if we wanted the calf to live. We started moving her towards the barn where we could handle her more easily. We didn't speak as we walked her there. The mood was somber as we all thought the same thing- this calf probably isn't alive any more. It's been too long. My concerns were turning now to Eliza and the toll on her body that pulling a stuck calf could cause.
Eliza went willingly into the barn, especially when she saw a bucket of sweet grain waiting for her. We quickly tied baler twine around each of the calf's legs (ideally we'd be using calving chains, but I never needed them before and thus didn't have them... a big mistake on my part). My uncle and I each pulled on one leg, our bodies nearly lying on the ground as we leveraged all our weight against a twelve hundred pound cow. I talked to her, urging her to help us out and give us contractions, a language foreign and unacknowledged.
Meanwhile, Eliza was eating from her bucket of grain like it's a casual sunday brunch.
We started to make sloww progress and got more of the calf's head out. We pushed back the amniotic slime from it's eyes. Suddenly two little eyelids, which were closed, popped wide open and stared at us in shock. I'm sure the look we were giving it was about the same. We all shouted in delight that it was alive. What a strange sight to have a calves partical head sticking out of a cows backside, staring wide-eyed at us as we attempted to pull it into this world.
Finally the whole head was through. Nearly in the clear. Eliza had been standing the whole time, so I braced to catch the calf as it slid out for a slightly more graceful landing onto the concrete floor.
I quickly wiped the goo from the calf's nose and mouth so it could breathe, and moved it up next to Eliza's face so she could see it and lick it off.
Naturally the next step was to check to see if it was a heifer or bull...
To our delight, it was a GIRL!!!
Turns out Eliza is a terrible mother who was too-aggressively licking her, head-butting, and kicking her as she tried to nurse, so we separated them immediately and I think they're both much happier for it.
We've taken to calling her Eloise and we all just love her so much!
Hopefully she'll be apart of our farm and milking herd for a very long time. She's half Ayrshire, half Brahman... they are a dual purpose breed so we'll wait to see how she does as a milk cow.
