Problem Heifers and Hero WWOOFers

Yesterday I was organising cattle and I came across a cow with a trimmed tail.  It was a reminder of a good story from a couple of months ago.

We have had a tough year with our calving.  We had 40 cattle due to calve.  22 were cows that had already had calves in previous years - in the main without any problems.  The other 18 were heifers - which is the name for a female that has yet to have a calf.  4 of them we bred ourselves - the other 14 were bought in to speed up the process of getting our cattle numbers up to what we think is our sustainable stocking level.

Heifers are inherently more problematic.  It is generally considered ok to put a heifer to the bull at 15 months - she then calves at 24 months.  By that stage my Belted Galloways should be around 350 to 380 kg.  If their breeding is ok ... there should be few problems.

Somehow we did have problems this year.  Of the 18 heifers - we lost 3.  We also lost 2 other calves - where the heifer survived.  At least another 3 or 4 had to be assisted with calving.  That is about half of the heifers - which is a bit of a disaster really.

That makes 8 dead cattle, a substantial vet bill - and an unavoidable sense that we have failed to look after them properly.  Given that we know the breeding of all the animals - we think the problem may have been in putting them onto fresh Spring growth in the final few weeks of their pregnancy - such that the calves were just a little bit bigger than the heifers could cope with.  I'm not really comfortable with that explanation, but we have not had trouble previously - and the older cows all calved without drama.

Anthony (our farm help) says fatalistically ... "Where there're livestock, there'll be dead stock."  But it's not much consolation.  

Anyway - back to the good story.  In October, in the middle of it all, Anthony and two WWOOFers (Kaori from Japan and Giorgio from Italy) came across a heifer called Fazilah who was in trouble.  Anthony pulled the calf - which was dead already.  Fazilah was down and didn't look likely to get up.  In such circumstances you try for a while - and then start thinking about humane disposal.

Fazilah was in a paddock that is quite steep - so Kaori and Giorgio manouvered her legs below her and massaged and bent them back and forth.  They then rolled her (with the assistance of the slope) onto her other side and massaged and worked on her other side.

They kept it up for 6 hours - 6 cold hours in a wet paddock!  Eventually, Fazilah  decided that she would try to get up - and did.  Even then, no one was sure she would survive the night, but again - she did.

Here then are the heroes:

Now I have the dilemma - do I cull her - or give her another chance?

Given the widespread nature of the heifer calving problems I have responded by:

• trying again with the 5 or 6 surviving heifers who had trouble calving this year - but if there is any problem again - they go; and
• giving the heifers born in the Spring of 2011 another 12 months before they go to the bull - meaning they will be 27 months instead of 15 months at conception and 3 instead of 2 years at calving.