Bulling

As with the previous year we were lucky to be able to borrow Paddy, a neighbour's pedigree bull to cover our cows during July and August. This would allow us to be calving at the same time as lambing, giving us more chance to monitor things and see how it all went.

We had decided not to put Gorple back in calf after her unplanned pregnancy so that she had time to grow and mature. Daisy, our oldest cow, also had an episode of mastitis and had to be penned up for much of the time Paddy was here so that we could administer antibiotics to her and strip out her udder each day. This meant it was less likely she had conceived too.

A hard winter

As the year progressed the calves grew well and the cows regained condition on the summer grazing. At that point we didn't know that we were in for the wettest winter in memory. What seemed like 7 months of endless rain fell turning even our best drained fields to mushy bogs. The sheltered pen we set aside for the cattle in the polytunnel became a quagmire and they were up to their knees in slurry and mud. Worse still, the run off was soaking the goat pen behind so badly that we had to give up and leave the cattle out for the remainder of winter. They managed admirably, despite the weather and the poor haylage, but we were desperate for it all to end.

Turnout time

By late April things were just about dry enough and there was sufficient grass to allow the cattle to move down to Lower Meadow where we hoped they would calve. Before the move we got a chance to put our second hand old crush to its first use and get them in to apply lice treatment, administer a wormer, and estimate their weights using measuring tape.

The herd walked calmly down the main track, pausing to grab a mouthful of hawthorn or hazel from the hedgerow on the way, and set about devouring the fresh grass in front of them without delay!

First calf for a first-timer

By keeping track of the dates when Paddy had been following individual cows around we had a reasonable idea of the calving window for most of them and the order they would come in. So it wasn't a huge surprise when Swinden was found with a calf one evening.

What was more of a surprise was that the calf looked like it could well have been born the previous day or at least before the early feed that morning. She had obviously kept it very well hidden and not showed any signs to us of imminent labour.

Next up ... Buttercup

We then had to wait a week for the next arrival before noticing Buttercup was in labour one afternoon. She chose a different spot in the field than last year but was still happy to let us watch from the other side of the adjacent dry stone wall. Soon after the calf flopped out the rest of the herd came over to see the new arrival and the valley was filled with their mooing!

Swinden's mother, Bramble, was also secretive, as she was last year (perhaps a family trait!) and had her calf during the darkness, around 2.30am. I found the freshly arrived calf being licked by her at one of the overnight checks we were still doing every day.

A long wait

Then it was all down to Clover to finish things off. We had expected her to calve before Bramble, but as cattle can be 2 weeks either side of their predicted date and she was showing no signs of anything starting we continued to watch.

Every day we'd wonder whether she was holding her tail to the side or whether there was a trace of mucus that might signal a calf was on its way. Each day nothing would materialise and Clover would graze and lie in the field looking uncomfortably round and growing a bigger udder.

Then about a fortnight after we had thought she may deliver we found her at the late afternoon check licking a dead calf. It was perfectly formed and still fairly warm so she'd only recently calved it but there was no sign of what had gone wrong. Whether it had died in the last days of pregnancy and that was why she was late delivering, or whether it was a malpresentation or difficult calving for her we'll never know. But it felt awful, especially sitting beside her as she licked and called to it, clearly still hopeful it would take a breath and shake its head.

We left them together for a day, so that she could understand that it was gone and mourn in her own way, before carrying the body back up the hill with heavy hearts of our own. Moments like these give rise to near overwhelming feelings of self-doubt and failure and your mind continuously cycles through the "what ifs". But the reality is that we may not have been able to change the outcome no matter what we did.

Clover continued to call for a few days and didn't want us going anywhere near where the calf had been born but slowly she returned to her usual self, rejoined the herd and let us scratch her shoulder again at feeding time.

1 in 1000!

Perhaps the most amazing outcome of calving was that Swinden, Buttercup and Bramble all had heifer calves again, which made it 10 in a row. Assuming a 50/50 chance of bull or heifer, this works out around a 1 in 1000 chance. Perhaps the cows were just trying to show it wasn't just the goats that could do unusual things!

Clover's calf was, ultimately, a bull, so the heifer streak has ended there.

All the cows were really good when it came to tagging their newborns and we managed this in the field for each of them saving us the challenge of coaxing them up into the handling pens.

Naming

Lastly there was just the job of picking out suitable names. We stuck with our convention of a local feature followed by a shade of their colour and have chosen:

Widdop Raven

Coldwell Onyx

Hameldon Noire