Yet again, while away from the farm, I got another phone call. I was in the middle of my Twin Cities delivery route, in the uptown area, when Morgan called and told me there was a newborn calf in the pasture.
While we don’t calve this time of year (we time our calves to arrive in May and June), we have had a cow visiting from our neighbor’s farm, and unexpectedly, she was with calf.
Our neighbor had brought his cow over last June so that she could get bred by the low-line Angus bull we had rented for the summer. But a couple of weeks ago I had noticed she was starting to “bag up” (meaning her milk was coming in) and I made a mental note to call my neighbor to see when he had last had a bull with her.
But before such a call was made, a calf arrived. It was a snow-free day, but still fairly cold, and Morgan could see the calf had just been born and was still wet.
Because I was hours away from returning to the farm, she called up the neighbor who owned the cow, and he and his wife came over on their four-wheeler with a beach towel. They ruffled up its coat to dry it off, and made sure it was suckling nicely from the new mama. Now 10 days old, the calf is doing great and running circles around the pasture and nursing aggressively.
Even though it was good news, I’m hopeful that it was the last “farm suprise” phone call I get in 2020. In a year as tumultuous as this this, I firmly subscribe to the idea the “no news is good news.”
Here’s hoping all is quiet on the northern front these last couple weeks.
Thanks for reading!
Andre