A couple weeks ago now, I was able to escape calving for a few days and take a mini-vacation to the Okanogan.  A friend of mine from Bella Coola goes to UBC Okanogan in Kelowna; she is also studying to become a vet. So, I went along for the ride to pick and pack her up after exams.  It was a lot of driving and I saw Kamloops, Vernon, Kelowna, Merrit, Quesnel and everything in-between. We live in such a beautiful province!  In Kelowna it was lovely to look out the window and instead of white snow, see lush green grass, flowers blooming and heat rising off the pavement. As much as I loved seeing my friend and having a break from everything, it was so good to see the cows again!

Gloriously, in this past week the snow has completely disappeared in Anahim, hallelujah! And the blustery days we’ve been getting have worked wonders in the corrals, drying up the mud, making it way easier to get around.

Two new additions have been made to the cowherd. A Holstein and Jersey, both milk cows and both so wonderful!  I named the Holstein, Black Velvet and Ben named the Jersey, Jessica. They each have so much personality, are gentle and petable. I have been doing a lot of milking as you might have guessed, but their milk is delicious and rich, so it is worth it. I've hand turned butter and made some ice cream, yummm! I have decided that one day I am going to get a Jersey milk cow and keep her for a pet :)  Milking is excellent exercise for one’s hands.

There are now less than 40 cows to calve, its so amazing! And all the heifers (first calvers) are done calving now. We had a long streak where we didn’t have to pull any calves, which was a nice change.  Nevertheless, one cow came along with a calf that had one leg back.  Since the head and one leg were already out, we had to push the calf back inside. Easier said than done.  The tail block was not working on this cow for some reason. I’m here to tell you, that trying to push against a cow is really hard. But we managed to get him back inside, straighten out the legs and pull the calf out easily enough.  Another exciting thing I learned is how to tube a calf.  So, if a calf is sick and dehydrated, you have to stick a tube down its throat and into the stomach to feed it electrolytes.  At first, I was so scared of getting the tube down the wrong hole and drowning it. But, thankfully I didn’t and am much more confident in tubing calves now. It’s a handy skill to know.

Most people know that last summer I raised an orphaned calf. She was my bottle baby for a few months.  She was small for her age because she was a twin and didn’t get as much milk as she could have eaten. She was sold to a local guy here in town a few months ago. He told me I could come and see her anytime. I went down there last week and couldn’t believe my eyes! My little cute baby has grown into a fair size teenager cow. She is doing well there though and is as nice as ever. It is amazing how fast things grow.

Branding is coming up in two weeks, the biggest event of the year (apart from rodeo). They are expecting around 50 people to show up and we have to feed them, ahhh! I’m up to my eyeballs at the moment in baking for desserts. We’re starting on the cooking soon.  I hope I’m not doing the cooking too, I might give everyone food poisoning or something. Sadly, I have not inherited my mother’s cooking skills. 

An extra exciting birth occurred here a few days ago.  A mare named Jelly Bean had her baby finally!  It is sooo adorable, with its long gangly legs. Three more foals are expected this spring; I just hope they have them all before I leave. 

The octopus calf

The calving has slowed down drastically and our night shifts have changed to every three hours instead of two. Punky and Eli decided it was finally safe to go home for a night, although they left the radio on just incase there were any problems.  I was on the 2 o’clock check.  When my alarm went off, I dragged myself out of bed and went outside.  Someone had put a calving cow in the barn on the 11:00 check. However, when I looked in on her, she had afterbirth hangout out but I couldn’t find the calf anywhere. I was puzzled. I ran her into the chute just to check her out. When I reached in and felt around, I was even more puzzled. All I could feel were three legs and feet (all different sizes), a tail, and no head. Something was VERY wrong and that baby wasn’t coming out naturally. I ran inside and got everybody up to help deal with this thing. Roger said that whatever was inside felt like a ball with legs sticking out of it every which way. It was either going to be a C-section or bullet calf. I called Punky and Eli on the radio and they rushed up to the ranch.  By the time Punky got here we had everything set up for the C-section, so she set to work right away. Once we were in the cow, the uterus wouldn’t flip and come to the outside insition, no matter how hard we pulled. One can’t cut into the uterus if it isn’t in a place where you can sew it up afterwards. I reached my arm inside the cut, went shoulder deep and could feel the bones of the calf through the uterus wall, but it would not budge. There was absolutely nothing that we could do for this cow and her calf, the most humane thing being to put her down. They got the gun and butchered her outside. I went to sleep for a couple hours. When I awoke, everyone said to look outside the door in the wheelbarrow.  So I did and I couldn’t believe what I saw!  It was the most deformed and scary looking calf you could ever imagine. There was not one thing normal or right about it. All of its joints were backwards, it had four joints on some legs instead of three, the legs were pointed weird directions, its face and nose were squashed in on one side, the neck was curved way back so the head was upside down, the spine was crooked, the hip bones in strange places, and the ribs were in the wrong spot (not covering internal organs). Later, I dissected it and the insides were just as weird as the outside. Its liver was all bulgy, it had one shriveled up kidney, the lungs were black, and the stomach was filled with fluid. The heart was normal. However, the liver, heart and lungs were all in the wrong place. It should have aborted long ago, but somehow it had lived all this time. No one had ever seen anything like it.  Although it was all very interesting, I felt so bad for the calf and the poor cow. She had been a good mother in previous years and was very gentle; sadly there was just nothing anyone could do for them. Here is a photo of what it looked like (don’t look if you are easily grossed out). I would post more pictures, but they are rather gory and I don’t want to cause anyone to be sick. 

Here are some pictures of the prolapse. The before and after shots :)

The beautiful warm weather seems to have been eluding us lately. And somehow, the Vancouver rain has found me. The ground was drying up so well! Now, with all this wet everywhere, the corral is a nightmare to wade through.  With mud coming right to the top of your boots, it makes chasing cows through the pens impossible. You get your daily exercise and burn lots of calories though.

Two exciting (for me anyways) events this week!

The first being that we discovered a calf was born with all of its small intestine dangling out of its bellybutton. The calf seemed healthy otherwise, was up and walking around right away.  I imagine everyone was thinking that the lead to the head solution would be the way to go and that surgery wasn’t worth a shot. However, I really wanted to at least try and do something to save her, even though there was, and still is, a huge possibility that she will die anyways.  So, out came the needles, scalpel, iodine, catgut thread, penicillin and lots of warm water.  Since the calf was born in a pile of shavings, we needed to wash, sterilize and lubricate the intestines before they could go back in.  The belly button hole was not big enough to push them gently back in place; therefore, we had to make the hole a bit wider.  When the intestines were all back in place we sewed her up, gave her a shot of penicillin, got her fed and put her back with her mama. She didn’t even lie down. The tough little thing was up and walking around right away, as perky as ever.  As of now she is still alive and doing extremely well considering. I am so glad that we did all we could to save her; hopefully she’ll be all right and infection won’t get her later.  We named her Hope.

The second rather thrilling event of the week was when a cow had a full on uterine prolapse while calving out in the pen. This happens when the cow has been pushing so hard to get the calf out, that she actually pushes out her whole uterus.  In this cow’s case, she didn’t get up and see that the calf was out, so she kept pushing. We didn’t realize what she was doing until it was too late. Therefore, Roger and I set to work on her.  Once in the maternity chute, she got a shot of lidocaine in her spine to stop her contractions. Then we chained her up by the tail, one to keep her upright, and two, because it is easier to push everything back in when the cow is in that position. After washing off the uterus and getting some of the after birth out, we dove elbows deep and stuffed her uterus back in.  I’ve never been so covered in blood in my life! Then I gave her a big does of liquid myosin, to help stop infection, and some oxytocin. After sewing up the cow’s rear end to prevent her from prolapsing again, she was put back with her baby.  What a fun experience! It was so interesting to see what the uterus actually looks like and how the after birth is attached to it and so forth.

Those were a couple of very busy and eventful days, but otherwise the days here are pretty routine.  We have got quite the orphanage going in the barn.  We have our regular barn bum, power milker, Fritzel; she has been with us since the start of the season and is getting quite large. Then there is an older calf whose mother died of cancer recently. One twin calf whose mother rejected her and another twin whose mother did not have enough milk. That is a lot of hungry little tummies to feed.  It takes us a good two hours every morning and evening to feed them all.  Hopefully they will all find new mamas soon. Wanda figures there are only about 115 cows left to calve, hurray!  I will be happy when I can get a full night sleep again.

Now it is back to Six Mile and my awaiting bed . . . and then up at 1:00 again . . .

Time flies when you are having fun!  It feels so weird that two months of calving has already gone by.  It’s so hard to believe that in 57 more days I will be boarding a plane departing for Sweden! I can hardly wait to see my dear friends again, after more than a year gone by.

Meanwhile spring has sprung, up here in Anahim Lake! The songbirds are slowly but surely returning, filling the air with their sweet melodies. Sunshine has finally become a regular occurrence, reaching temperatures that make you work up a sweat.  There have even been a few sunburns going around. My ear was rather crispy a few days ago.  But the most obvious sign that spring is here would be the hatching and horrendous buzzing of the flies. My swatting hand is again in use. And oh, shock and horror, the first two mosquitoes of the year have been spotted! They had better stay in hiding until I am long gone; I don’t think I could go through another summer of nasty, flying, biting insects.

With all the warm weather, the snow has sure taken a beating. It is truly amazing and wonderful how much it has melted this past week.  The downside of this is that you can hardly walk through the mud (aka cow shit) without almost loosing your boots in it.  Needless to say, my afternoons have been spent digging drainage ditches in an attempt to keep the water levels in the corrals down. It is actually quite fun, reminds me of making little rivers in my sand box when I was little.

The calving has been fairly steady. We’ve had a few very busy days and a few slower days, a nice mix.

We had a great Easter at the ranch.  The boys went on a big Easter egg hunt and got loaded up with sugar. Their cousins and friends were visiting, so that was very fun for them.  We all decorated and died Easter eggs (courtesy of Jackson’s 30 or so chickens), and once again I am reminded that I am not an artist.  That was before eating a big lunch and then an even bigger turkey dinner.  All in all a great day!

It has been a slow calving week; I guess the cows decided to give us a few days off.  I have taken advantage of the time off by reading, taking some long afternoon naps and trying to go to bed as early as possible. The calving is slowly picking up and just in time because the weather has turned warm again! It is now reaching a balmy 12 degrees on a fairly regular basis! As a result, my snow pants can pretty much stand up on there own.
This past week there has been a run of twins. There have been about 5 pairs so far, I do believe. One set of twins was incredibly tiny. We weighed the smaller twin and it came to a whopping 18 pounds!  That’s like a medium sized turkey . . . but she is doing great, sucking well, determined to grow. She is oh sooooo cute; I could die! There was another calf born and that weighed 126 pounds. She is a very large girl that’s for sure. I find the difference in weights simply astounding.
Last night I went outside at my regular time of 1:00 to check cows. A full or almost full moon was casting bright light over the snow; I hardly needed the flashlight. I heard a lone wolf cry to his pack across the flat. And they, in turn, answered with an echoing chorus that seemed to put the cows on edge just a bit. What an amazing sound for nature.
The lady who gave me my kitty cat has another litter of kittens . . . this is so bad. I went to see them and now I’m thinking I need another one. It is so hard to overcome their cuteness!
Other than the regular, everyday chores, the occasional calf pulling and cow sorting, nothing much has been happening. Just the habitual ups and downs of the season.