Cow #32 gives birth, 7 March 2002.

#32 Calving, 5.17 - 6.39pm, 7 March 2002.

Here is the progress of the birth of 32's latest calf, her sixth. A story with a happy ending, but a bit of a "twist" in the middle. These pictures are perhaps a little "gruesome" if you're not used to seeing such things, so advance at your own risk and, if you have doubts, don't do it while eating.
The whole page may take a couple of minutes to load, as it contains 23 photographs.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email us.

start

Just another day, outstanding in her field, except that she was in labour. That was evident to me as soon as I entered the paddock. She was making the very distinctive "mmm" sound a cow makes to her new calf (it's not a "moo", more of a long grunt). She had decided that the black calf born on Friday, was hers, and every minute or two, she'd go and lick that calf and call to her. Cows will often latch onto another cow's calf just before they birth their own, even to the point of allowing the calf to feed. I've seen this happen as early as two days before birth, but usually the cow is already in labour, or about to start.

A typical pose during contractions. Internal muscle movement is often obvious during this time. Then, as in humans, there'll be a break for a couple of minutes, before the next lot.

Having laid down for a few minutes and a few sets of contractions, the first membranes appeared. In this picture, the cow is in the process of standing. As she got up, the bag burst.

Amniotic fluid being expelled with a contraction.

Here is the sac in which the calf presents.
The calf in this picture is the one the cow had "adopted" and continued to stay with, almost lying on her on a couple of occasions.

A foot can be seen inside the sac.

Then two feet.

Then things started to look a little odd. Underneath the feet, the vagina is being pushed open, as if there is something about to come out there.
Usually the head will come through resting on top of the legs, often tongue first, and it will usually make an obvious bulge above the legs.

The calf is obviously nearly right, but just a bit skewed to the side. The head is at the top, but relative to the cow, is off to the side of the legs. Then below the head in the picture, is the left foot resting over the right one.

The cow stood up at this point and the sac broke, exposing the feet. I was hoping that with some movement by her, the calf would straighten itself up a bit, but there's little room for that to happen at this stage.

Then she got down and pushed...

... and pushed...

... and the position of the calf became clearer, the further out it came.
I was not actually worried by this, figuring that the positioning was so near to correct that there wasn't any problem.

During every push the calf was still advancing a bit.

Not looking terribly lively at this point!

An ear out for all that straining wasn't much reward...

... and then the pushing didn't produce any movement at all!
STUCK!

Stephan conveniently arrived to see why I hadn't come home ready to go out, so I handed him the camera and began to assist.
The calf was quite stuck, presumably because his shoulders were unable to move because of the position of his head. So I pulled: both legs, one leg, the other leg. Wet little calves are quite slippery, so I used the nearest cloth to hand...

... (i.e. my singlet) to get a better grip on his legs. His joints crackled and eventually one shoulder "popped" through the gap...

... and with the next couple of contractions...

... he slid on out.

Checking to see his mouth was clear and he was breathing ok.

One of the other cows now turned up to help out with the clean-up.

back to the top of this page

Back to the March page.