11:16 and all is finally well....

Ouffffta.  That wasn't quite how we were thinking to spend the evening!   I arrived home from babysitting right at supper time.  While we were eating, my dad pointed out to us that there was a cow calving in the South pen and he said she may be having trouble, as she'd been pushing for a while already.  As we ate, a heavy fog poured into the farmyard.  Andrew was still over cleaning grain, so I milked his cow and my mom did the turkey/goat chores, then we both carried hay and water to the two cow/calf pairs we have in the barns currently.  My dad fed the hay and by this time, it was getting dark outside with it seeming even more dark with the fog surrounding everything.   My dad checked the cow then and it happened to be the 2nd calver cow that my grandparents bought for me at Christmas time.  She'd been pushing for at least 3 hours and there were no feet to be seen.  After trying to chase her into the pen by the barn for 3 times (and after my dad slid into her in the mud and she took part of the bumper of the pickup off), we finally got her headed in the right direction.  By this time, two of the bulls (who we'll be sorting off and getting in their own pen very soon, now that we're started with calving) had started to fight----right by the gate where the cow needed to go in.  My dad and Jacob got the cow in the smaller pen, but that squirted the bulls my direction.  They broke up their fight all of a sudden and the one swirled around and started running, but that's where I happened to be.  I screamed and thought I was going to die for a second, but God protected me and gave me strength in my legs to hop for the panel.   Jacob says the bull hopped in the other direction, for which I'm very grateful, but it looked to me like he was just an inch away. 

SO, after that, we got the cow in the barn. (Andrew arrived about at this point).  We have another cow locked in the calving pen part of the North barn, so we decided to rope the cow and pull the calf in the barn where the cow was.  That took a little doing, but we at last had her lying down and I held her tail back while my dad and Jacob pulled the calf.  They can't figure out why she couldn't have the calf either, as the feet and head were where they were supposed to be and they didn't even need to use a calf-puller, just pulled it by hand with the chains.  It was a relief and  JOY to find out the calf was still ALIVE after all of that!  

Our difficulties were not over yet though.  Shortly after letting the cow back up, she pushed out not only the afterbirth, but her whole uterus.  :(  OH NO!   The guys went and got the stock-trailer hooked up and backed up to the barn, but when my mom called the vet, he said they really prefer not to have farmers haul the cows to the clinic in that condition, as it all could rip out on the way if she's anxious in the trailer and then the cow would die.  Soooooooooooooooooooo, the guys moved the pickup and trailer out of the way and we tried to figure out how we were going to contain the cow again, not really wanting to rope her again.  The veterinarian was still 45 miles away, coming from a different farm, so that gave us some time to prepare.  We ended up setting up some panels in the milking parlor and getting her in one of the headgates there.  She was really a good cow and held very still for her operation.  While the vet sewed her back up, I tagged my bull calf and rubbed him off somewhat with an old blanket.  My dad and I later went out and fed him half a bottle of colostrum, just to get him going as his mama's been through a lot today and may be lying around a bit more than a cow usually does, so we wanted to be sure he got some milk in his tummy tonight.

We're praying for the rest of the calving season to go better than it has been!  So far, there's been plenty of trouble and we have a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong ways to go yet.  One of Andrew's cows calved today too and all was well there, so that is a good sign.  ;)