attack of the farm animals

Claire is really trying to figure out what makes her toys move on her play gym. She usually starts to fuss when they don't move, and fussing involves flailing arms, which usually inadvertently smack a cow or chicken, hence making them move. So, I really think she thinks they move when she fusses. But in this instance, no fussing was involved and boy did they take action!

Yes, this is humor in my house.

Our Halloween

In the afternoon on Halloween, we were visited by the Yellow Fairy.
This is a very particular type of fairy as she makes rainbows, apparently and differs GREATLY from the Purple Fairy that visited us last year.

Check out those gold shoes!

And, some wand action.

Later that night, we were visited by 100+ college students for a bonfire and hayride. I know the count only because I had 96 spoons and ran out. I also have no photos of the event as I barely survived. All our guests were very gracious and wonderful and we plan to do it again next year, but hopefully I won't be walking around with a 37 week belly and swollen feet. That would be much more enjoyable I'm sure.

it's a good thing

Greg texted me this photo not too long ago. Seems like a normal occurrence, but for this calf to be up on all 4's sucking on momma was something we didn't anticipate.

You see, this calf had/has black leg.

Duh...I know the calf is black so she has 4 black legs.

I'm referring to a debilitating disease calves get between the ages of 6-12 months. It's from eating feed or grass with bacteria which causes their muscles to deteriorate and usually is fatal within 12-48 hours. It's very rare to cure black leg, which is why this calf should have been vaccinated for it.

It's a good thing Dad and Greg were out looking at the property one afternoon, because they noticed this calf away from the group, laying down by the creek. Immediately they noticed her leg being inflamed and called the vet, who wasn't optimistic of the outcome, but advised us to give her penicillin anyway. We gave her a big dose, and continued to monitor her and now she's doing quite well.

Will she gain back full use of the leg? Probably not.
Will we have to put her down? No.
Will we eat her? Maybe...but only after 60 days following her last dose.

It's a good thing.

april foster, nature photographer

In the blistering heat of the hot Kentucky sun (yes, it really was about 93 degrees), I braved the elements in search of nature.

Actually, I was just walking from the house to the barn and noticed the hundreds of butterflies flitting about. And, since I had gone to the house to get my camera in the first place, I thought "why not snap a few photos?"

So there I was bent down, pregnant belly and all, snapping (and sweating) away, when Greg rushed up behind me, "Are you alright?!"

I think he thought I was either (a) sick or (b) hurt.

Of course I was alright, so at that point he began making fun of me for taking my nature photos....which is so out of character for me. It's kind of a "Greg" thing to do, so now he really thinks my brain is gone.

But, seriously, I'm proud of my 100mm 2.8 lens.

how to tag a bull

I wouldn't recommend walking up to a bull and piercing his ear. It might end badly for you. So, I'll outline an easier way below.

First, lead him into the chute with some sweet-feed.
Ever heard the saying, "You catch more flies with honey?" The same is true with cows, too. They'll follow you right into the pen if you're holding some sweet feed.

But, after he's in the chute, there's only one way out and you have to "coax" him along. This usually means twisting his tail and hitting his hiney. I even got in on this action because he's a little more skittish of me than of the boys, so he moved a little better.




Now he's moving toward the headgate (that yellow thing).
See my dad standing there (look past the belly, sorry dad, but you knew I would post this for mom to see). His hand is on a lever. Right now the bull can walk right on through, but just when his head is clear, dad will pull the lever and the gate will squeeze around his neck so he's immobile.



Oh, well, Greg did it instead.
Maybe dad was getting conscientious about the belly shots.

Now, I've moved around to the opposite side. Greg is using his knife to cut off the old tag.


And is now replacing it with a new one.

Why tag cows? 2 reasons:

• So you can identify which is which. When we vaccinate or treat them, or if they have babies, we need to know which cow has had what done to them and which calf belongs to which momma.
  
• We also put fly tags on them in the spring to keep flies out of their eyes. Flies get on poop and when the flies land on the cows' eyes, they get pink eye. So, we try to prevent it by putting these really smelly tags (and they're even more potent if you're pregnant), on their ears to keep the flies away from the cows faces.

We also tag the little ones too, but they're much easier.

A new calf weighs about 100 lbs, so all it takes is one person holding and the other piercing to get the job done. Hey, we even castrated this little one after he got his ear pierced, so I'm sure he didn't mind the earring.

Fun farm stuff, I tell you!

ivf - day 45 - my follicles are ready + another new calf

I got up the nerve to get a photo of the monitor at my visit on Wednesday. This was my last E2 and ultrasound (yay!). I don't know why I felt it was a covert operation because I could have gotten a print out if I had just asked.

At each of my monitoring visits, the ultrasound tech, Patty, looks at my right and left ovaries and measures each follicle one by one. She calls out numbers like 11x15 or 12x13. I write them all down and then I meet with my IVF nurse, Jennifer to discuss it. She adds the two numbers and divides by 2 to get something like 13 and 12.5 for each follicle. When I have several that are at 18 or above, it's time to trigger ovulation. So, tonight, I took two shots of Ovidrel at 9:30pm. That medication induces ovulation exactly 36 hours after injection. So, my egg retrieval is scheduled 35 hours post-injection at 8:30am on Friday. In order to retrieve the eggs, they have to still be in the follicles.

Normal ovulation is very similar to this process. The body develops lots of eggs at the beginning of a cycle (actually, eggs are recruited for development about 3 months out), then somewhere along the way, one surpasses the others and that's the one that is ovulated at about 18mm. I've read that it's rare for an egg less than 15mm to produce a pregnancy. So, whether it's the IVF process developing lots of eggs or the body in a natural process, the egg has to be to a certain level of maturity before pregnancy can occur.

Today, I go back for E2 but not monitoring. And, the best news of all, NO INJECTIONS TOMORROW!!! I get a free day before diving headfirst into progesterone injections later this week.

Considering we have a busy week already, our cows haven't exactly been helping us any. Saturday, #1 had a cow. Then, yesterday about 1:00, Greg ran down the barn steps with binoculars in hand saying, "You need to come look at this! You may never see something like this again!" So up I ran and looked out the front window into the wooded area where #7 (the cow we thought would have a calf first) was standing. Obviously in labor.

Well, that went on and on and on.

Jared, a college kid from church, was helping me with some Studio Calico work, but quickly diverted his attention to helping Greg with the cow. He was in nursing scrubs from his clinical rotation, so he donned my dad's carhart overalls, coat and hat and headed out.

Then, around 5:00 we decided to call the vet and get her up.

If you're not used to farm-speak, you might think "get her up" means to make her stand up, but you'd be wrong. "Get her up" means to get her up in the pen and in the chute, where we can pull a calf if need be.

The vet came at 6:00 but it took awhile to get her up.

So, it was around 8:00 before she was in the chute and he could palpate her. If you don't know what that means, I'm not explaining that one.

She was fully dilated and tired, so they made the decision to pull the calf.

Thankfully, it all worked out, momma and baby are fine and resting in some hay because it's cold tonight.

We'll check on them this morning and hopefully the calf will be on the boob-tube as Jared would say. I plan to take photos, but it was dark last night, so not the best opportunity.

brand spankin' new

Dad and Greg have been on the prowl for a new calf.

They thought for sure #8 was going to have one any day.

And, with all the snow and freezing weather they were afraid a calf would drop and well....

On Saturday, Dad and Mom went to the home show in Nashville, so Greg was on the prowl by himself.

He rode out into the field and counted the cows.

And counted again.

And still couldn't get the right number.

So, out he went to find the missing cow.

And in the thicket in the bottoms, he found this:

Look, the calf is still wet!

And, there was a certain compound word that momma cow was still snacking on. Something that Greg ran back to the barn to tell Cara and myself all about. Over. And over.

And when we looked a little closer, it wasn't #8 at all.

#1 aka Suzy aka "She's-Pretty-But-She's-Crazy"

I mean, look at how pretty she is just minutes after birth! You can't buy that beauty.

And her coat....so smooth, yet all the other cows have tufts in every direction.

I hope baby inherited that good hair.

Before we left, so she could have a moment alone, baby got up, found the utter, and took some sips. Okay, took some gulps. And we breathed a sigh of relief.

And, then, I may or may not have rubbed up against momma cow for a good luck charm.

snowy cow photos

I hope you like snowy cow photos because this year has been exceptional for them.

1. We've had lots of snow...more than we've had in 10 years, I'd say.
2. We have cows.

And that, folks, are the reasons I have lots of snowy cow photos.

I've also learned that some cows know how to stay clean and others are first to find the mud.

Here's cow #1, which Greg has always described as "She's pretty but she's crazy." That also characterized G's prior 2 girlfriends before me, so I would say he knows what he's talking about.

Now, she's all gussied up in her winter coat and she couldn't be more gorgeous. But she's still crazy, so you might want to stay away.

I took this photo to show the difference between a cow with calf and without calf. Above, you see a skinny cow.

Below, you see a fat cow.

Notice the width difference. It's quite humorous, actually.

A cut little calf who somehow got mud on his face.


awwwwwwwwww

Getting tired in the sun.

She's awake now....waiting for food.

Still waiting.
Just a bit disheveled.
Compare her to #1. Now do you see why Greg says she's pretty?

Wondering when I'm going to stop taking photos and feed them.

Still wondering.

I guess they got tired of waiting and went back to the hay.

which is after all, how they stay warm in the winter.

I used the PW's tutorial on these photos to really make the cows pop in the snow. She used it with horses, but all I had to work with was cows. :)

cows and snow

During the evening and through the night on Friday, about 6 inches of snow landed on Bowling Green. I think it's been about a decade since we've gotten that much snow in one night. Usually we get an inch or two from time to time, but rarely this much.

Lucky for us, it happened the first year we had cows....pregnant ones at that. So, I've been worried that one will drop and freeze, but so far, so good.

As long as we keep enough hay for them, they stay warm. They grow thick wooly coats (scroll down for photos of this), and like the vet informed me, "people make coats out of this stuff" (meaning their leathery skin).

This is one of the first photos I took of the cows in the snow and I laughed out loud when I caught it. Looks like a milk mustache :)
One of the calves staring me down. (By the way, I used my Canon 100mm 2.8 for all these photos.)

Another calf...love that wooly hair.

Our one and only brown cow...she's so wide, getting close to calving.

I just think this wooly hair is so funny. They look so disheveled. Normally they're 'do's are perfectly coifed, but in the winter they look so haphazard.

See the narrow trails they make in the snow. It's so funny to watch such a big animal make such small tracks.

Gertrude looking up to say, "hi!"
And, as soon as we took off toward the feeding trough, they raced after us. I was so worried they'd slip and fall, after all they don't exactly have shoes for this terrain.

Stampede!
a bucking bronco (or heifer, more than likely)
And, this shot just makes me laugh. She looks CRAZY!!!

Strange to see this running after you and I'm surprised I was able to get photos in focus.

Once we got to the trough, Greg threw me out of the side-by-side and told me to stand to the side. He grabbed the feedsack to beat them to the trough.


Digging for a knife (which is the same knife I ran through the wash last night. I'm constantly washing his things, like an entire set of spark plugs and a title to a car we bought in Florida...now that was a typical Greg moment.)

And there they are. One is staring me down to make sure I didn't get in on the action.

And our last straggler, a "short-short" (aka "old" for cows since their teeth are ground down). Greg is so compassionate and always keeps back a portion of the feed for her.

I'll have more to share later, but hope you've liked this glimpse of our wintery farm.