Fara

 

Fara - not even 24 hours old

Woo Hoo!  It happened!  It finally happened!  One of my heifers calved!  I now officially have my first "Bred and Owned" heifer!  That means that I owned the dam (mother) and I bred her and got a heifer calf out of her.  Some stock shows have a class in which they compete.


I'm bummed because she calved while I wasn't there, but at least everything went okay.  We've checked her all through the night for days.  The last time we checked her was at 4:00 p.m.  She was acting weirder than usual.  Mom had a feeling we should stay through the afternoon, but we had so much to do because we've been gone so much...  We were also worried because she has been wallowing out a little nest in one spot in the pen for days.  We've only seen her out of it once.

Faith - "nesting"

She stands and shifts her weight back and forth on each of her back legs, kind of doing a little dance.  The other thing we see is her lying down in that spot.  At 4:00 her vulva was about six inches away from the fence.  I was afraid that with her being so dead set on that spot and that position that she wouldn't give the calf enough room to come out. Thank goodness she moved.  From the looks of things, she moved out of her nest to calve.  My landlord found baby "Fara" around 10:00.

Fara - a couple hours old and still a little damp

They figure that she was born between 8:00 and 9:00.  Ooooh.  That baby was huge.  She's really tall.  Love her markings!  She has bigger black markings than her mother.  Beautiful!!!

One day old

Thank you, Lord for an easy delivery of this big ol' heifer calf!