Happy Birthday, Girls!

Happy Birthday Annie, Happy Birthday Penny

Well, phew, we made it through three weeks without losing a calf, a mother, or much more of my hair! That was one steep learning curve, and I'm sure we aren't out of the woods, yet. But..... I now manage to milk the cows without the hysterics of the first week (from me, not the cows) having blocked as many holes in the bagpipes as I can to ensure concentration on one teat at a time.

Claw and Bagpipes

Does anyone else find all this talk of multi-tasking grossly overrated? My feeling is that doing one task well, before going on to the next one, is probably more efficient than ten all at the same time. No doubt the research is being done as I post, and my cognition friends will have the answer. Anyway back to the Birthday Girls. Their growing up is just amazing and they now attempt to drink from the trough - a good thing, as even with fans and shade the heat and humidity are taking their toll on all of us. Annie in particular, being bottle fed, was showing some signs of dehydration and we have switched to giving her milk in three meals rather than two. That has helped her a lot, and she and Penny have plenty of energy to skip around and play cow fights all over the arena.

This three weeks has probably been the longest in our lives, and without the patience and understanding of some experienced cow people, and our cow vet, plus a little humor, might just have been an animal or two, too far. What I can say, is that the next calves are going to get the benefit of this learning in spades, and we might even be able to sleep at night without worrying that we are making some serious mistake somewhere. We could alter the tag line to "Two Ex-Pregnant Cows - lots of experience! except that might viewed as a little bit of an exaggeration after only three weeks. So we'll leave it as it is!