To be or not to be

After a hard day's work, all one wants to do is have some well deserved rest and maybe wonder what the next day may bring whilst enjoying a nice warm cup of tea.

Unfortunately. during the calving season the cows don't seem to think that we deserve our rest. Especially the calves, some of them like to plan their birth at the most inopportune moments, preferably somewhere between supper and midnight or, if we are very unlucky, at 3 o' clock in the morning.

Thursday evening one of the heifers started calving just as we were finishing up. We brought her to a pen so she could give birth in peace, rushed in to have a bite to eat, and came back to prepare for what was to come: twins. 
Mark had warned me that the cow might not accept both calves, in which case I would have to feed one of them. I am ashamed to admit, that I was delighted at the thought.

But as the evening progressed I began to feel less and less delighted. The birth was very difficult. The first calf was very big and the poor cow could not push it out by herself. To make matters worse she didn't seem to be able to lay down as she had slipped and fell a couple of days before. The poor thing was really struggling. 
Whilst the boys tried to pull the calf out, I took on the role of assistent and gave them the tools they needed: ropes, and a very scary looking contraption to make it easier to get the calf out). 
I was given medicine to squirt under the tongue of the wee thing as soon as it came out to make sure his ticker wouldn't fail. Time was ticking and although no one said it out loud, we all knew that the calf may not make it.

Finally, the calf came out. It was enormous. In fact, it was bigger than some of the calves that were a few days old. His eyes were bulging, almost bursting out of their sockets as I rushed in to squirt the medicine under his tongue. We rubbed him with straw to make him breathe and luckily could feel his heart going like crazy. 

The poor lad was so big, that we wondered whether there would be a second calf at all. And if there was- would it be big enough to survive? Would it even be alive at all?
We checked and yes, there was a tiny calf still waiting to be born. Her feet were so small that we thought they might break if we pulled to hard, but we managed to get her out unscathed. The wee thing less than half the size of her brother, and miraculously, she was very much alive. 

The mother accepted both her calves, but the next struggle was to be the amount of milk: she hardly had any. But life works in mysterious ways and soon the answer to our problem came in the form of a stillborn calf. 
One of the twins would get a onesie made out of the dead calf's skin and would get a new mother. 
As horrible as it sounds, it was the best option we had. This was the mother of the dead calf would get over her loss and both the twins would get the milk they needed. 
Wearing the dead calf's skin was the only way to get the cow to accept one of the twins. 

I won't torture you with the details of the skinning, although I found it very interesting to watch, but I will say this: it worked wonderfully for all the cows and calves concerned (And the humans too, I might add).