It's hard to say which is more exciting: winning a purple ribbon or having a new calf born. That's a tough one.
It's spring again and that is the ideal time for calving. If you've got a March heifer, you can get more showing time out of her in the heifer classes before she is bred, has a calf of her own (hopefully a heifer) and has to move up into a cow class.
As exciting as calving is, it is also nerve-wracking. What if it comes early? What if the calf gets stuck and has to be pulled, and no one is there to help it? The list of "what if"s goes on and on.
My friend's Guernsey aborted a fetus last year. It was only about the size of a cat and it was missing part of its leg. It just never developed those bones.
She bred her again and this time had to have a c-section. It was a bull. She decided to bottle feed it for awhile. It died within the week.
Another friend had a Milking Shorthorn calve last night. It was full term and perfectly formed, but in miniature. It was too weak to stand or hold its head up. They fed it and stayed up with it all night, but it just wasn't right, and it died.
The death of an animal can make you feel like a failure. It can make you feel ashamed, like you did something wrong. It isn't anyone's fault. This thing happens in nature all the time. I also lost my first heifer at six months due to digestive malformation.
The other kick in the pants is all the time and money invested in the lost animal. You buy semen. You pay for someone to artificially inseminate (A.I.) your animal. You pay to have it fetal sexed. You watch over it and care for it. You fret through the weeks before calving. You lose hours of sleep checking on her...and to wind up with nothing for your efforts...it's a very defeating feeling.
My family has been praying for months about my heifers and their calves-to-be. We know how terribly wrong things can go. We just pray that God protects them all and makes them perfect and healthy and strong. I do what I'm supposed to, but the rest is in God's hands.
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