Calf 13 - Mama's

After a long time - since May 10 - I have a new calf.  Mama gave birth last evening.  I am positive Mama and Diamond ate too much pennycress weed and aborted their first calf and had to get pregnant a second time.

This morning Donna helped me check the sex of the calf.  Mama was her ever protective self so we had to do the check by looking from behind the corral fence.  Eventually we came to the conclusion the calf is female, a heifer.  The calf is all chocolate brown, like so many of Toby's calves this year.  I would like to put an ear tag on the calf to help tell it apart from the other calves, but the effort to try to separate the calf from Mama was be so great that it isn't worth it.  Before you can say, 'no tag, that is how you tell Mama's calf apart', I'll let you know two other all chocolate brown calves (#40 and #70) tore off their ear tags already.

Mama's udder and nipples are so huge one would think such a small calf wouldn't be able to drink.  But from the energy the little calf has already, she has been drinking.  Mama is patient and helpful to have her calves drink.

I know the calf looks black in the photos, but she is a dark chocolate brown.

Here is a 13 second video of Mama and her new calf this morning.  The calf is just shy of 12 hours old.   https://youtu.be/hnnxAZF-7hQ

Only Diamond is left to calf and then I will be done for the year.  Diamond's udder is slowly getting bigger so I think she will calve sooner than later.

I'm glad I got the hay bales into the hayshed yesterday.  Started raining this afternoon and it is supposed to be rainy off-and-on all week.