Meet Bobby T

After a long and arduous labour, that had me quite undone (nothing like seeing a cow heaving around with two feet sticking out (still shrink wrapped) – that can leave a girl in a state), and Lady exhausted and disoriented she gave birth to a big fat bull calf.   And in the interim Lady managed to scrape up her udder – how I do not know. So now we have a wounded teat to deal with too. But she was up and down. Up and down and so engorged. It was horrible to watch. She startled when I approached so I had to keep clear.

But after way too long she managed to give birth to a big bull calf.  She got straight back up and after only a few minutes of licking he tried to get up too.  So both recovered fast.

After he got his land legs he kept stumbling under her searching for a drink. But he could not latch onto a teat. They were so hard and swollen and he is so tall that he could not get to her.  

And because her udder was so bad: after only a couple of hours I brought her in to be milked. I adjusted things for the injured teat and she gave 50  pounds of colostrum without lifting a foot.   50 pounds which is five gallons which is 18 litres. Too much. Bobby T and I will be working hard to get this udder back into order.

So as her baby still had not had any colostrum I gave him a good drink (he drank from the bottle without even blinking) and then put them into the side room in the barn to bond (baby had taken to following me about which is not the best idea if I want to share milk with Lady).  But we will see, for a wee while Bobby T will be with her 24 hours a day and  I will be milking twice a day to try and clean up this udder.  I will give him a bottle as well and see how we go because if he tries to suck from that injured teat she will push him off – I will keep a good eye on things.

I did this with Naomi and it worked out.

He is very tall and was way too big for me to carry.   He had to walk all the way to the barn with me pushing him poor boy. I picked Naomi and carried her about without any problems but this boy is Huge!

I will have more pictures for you tomorrow of course – yesterday just got too busy.  I did not relax until I had Lady milked and her wound doctored and then it was time to feed all the other animals and birds – everything was late. No dinner!!

I hope you have a lovely day.

Love celi

PS ‘T’ is the letter for this year. (So anything born in 2016, that we keep, will be named with a T otherwise I just forget how old anyone is). This was determined by Txiki of course.

PSS. Camera house got put down in the line of fire and is having a good clean today. Poor Camera House – the things he has to deal with.