Faked Out By a Scratch

It had been a full week since I was fooled by our six year old cow named Scratch. To me she looked like she was near calving. I pulled her away from the main herd and moved her into the nursery field where she could calve in a clean, grassy field away from the crowd.

She put up with the move and got reacquainted with the cows that have their new calves with them, but she was not content. Two days later, when I had the gate open to take hay to the main herd, she calmly walked out the gate and back to her non-birthed friends. Day after day, she scoffed at me while feeding (this may have been just my imagination).

She simply refused to deliver and refused to live in the nursery field, until today. Her calf, Scrappy was born early this morning weighting in at 68 lbs., not far from the main herd.

She and her calf needed to be moved off the hillside and back out into the nursery field. Today marked day number seven since I thought she was ready to deliver.

Scratch is now more than happy to hang with the other mothers and babies in the nursery field.