While Florida Gulf Coast may be shocking the basketball world… these heifers continue to rock our world. Darrin is about half way through calving… he has a total of 130 heifers that need to give birth. I showed you last post how he pulls a calf out in the corral. Those are the times he gets lucky. Normally, he has to get the heifer into a squeeze chute… like this time.
He locks her in so he can help pull the calf out. Here you can see the chains are attached to the calf’s legs.
Darrin literally will lay on his back so he can pull with all of his might to get the stuck calf out of the mother. At night, his arms ache after so much strain.
Finally, he knows the calf is coming out.
Here’s you can see the white head emerging with the front legs.
Darrin doesn’t want to stop the forward momentum so now he’s completely laying on his back pulling as hard as he can.
And now the calf is slowing slipping out.
The calf is now completely out…and now the real work begins.
Darrin rubs off the afterbirth from the calf….
And puts it on the mom’s face so she knows what her baby smells like. The hope is she will take the calf. Often times, when Darrin has to pull a calf, the mom doesn’t want anything to do with the baby. So he’s hoping to get the calf’s smell on the mom in the hopes she will know this is her calf.
He then drags the calf into a large pen so the mom and baby can be alone and figure out they go together.
This mom took her calf. But when they don’t, the work is doubled… tripled maybe. I’ll explain why in my next post.
