Last week, Anthony and I went to a nursery in Ixonia, about 45 minutes north of us. This nursery, Ebert's Greenhouse Village, was offering tours of their facilities and greenhouses, showing what they do to prepare for the growing season. It was an incredible place, with over 20 different greenhouses and some of the kindest and sweetest people I've met at a business in one place at one time - more on that later.
I emailed Glenn, whom you might remember from this post, or this one. He's the cow whisperer, Patsy and Loretta's first Daddy, and he lives about 10 minutes from the nursery. We wanted to visit, catch up and of course, see all of his girls.
baling twine, image
Glenn has been such a great friend and a huge source of knowledge for us. I email him lots of questions and am constantly asking his advice not only about our girls, but about all things farm related. This time when we went to his house, he had many things to talk to us in regard to our girl's upcoming calving. He surprised us with some bailing twine ready to go, in case we need to assist Patsy in pulling out her calf. (I'm SO hoping things don't get to this point) He demonstrated how to do it, and gave us a couple of sets to take home. He also saves his Ag papers for me to read, and even had custom t-shirts with our farm logo made for us as a surprise! I don't know what we did to deserve a relationship with him, but he is wonderful and sweet and we are so lucky to have him in our lives. After visiting for a while in the house, Anthony and Glenn and I went out to the cow yard. Glenn has a good-sized herd and is expecting some calves himself, around the first of May. We saw both Patsy and Loretta's mothers, which was fun because we didn't remember exactly what they looked like.
Glenn's cow yard
Glenn told us he was trying to "bump" calves earlier that morning - which means pushing on an area where the calf is inside of the cow, and the calf "bumps" or pushes back. I had no idea what he was talking about. I asked him about it, then he took me to one of his pregnant girls to show me how to do it. I didn't feel anything, and quite frankly it was kind of irritating that cow, so she walked away in a bit of a huff. We tried on a few more, and then I took a picture of where Glenn had placed his fist, so I could reference it when I went home.
I did some research online, and learned a bit more. Basically, you are using a soft fist to push on the cow which in turn should cause the baby inside to bump you back. The area is on the right side of the cow or heifer - which is the non-rumen side, where the calf is laying inside. Usually this can be felt after the 7th month of pregnancy - give or take a few weeks.
image credit One guy's method was to bounce his fist a bit, over and over, until he felt something come back. You can see that video here. Once we got home, we went to give the girls their nightly feed. I tried it on both Patsy and Loretta. They weren't too thrilled about it, but they didn't run away from me. I've tried every day since then and so far, nothing. Wish me luck in getting some kind of bump back from that baby inside Patsy - or better yet, Loretta. I'm sure they will love me practicing on them.