Pressure and Firestone

Pressure came into the barn at feeding time. But she only ate about half of her hay before she stepped back from the manger and calmly walked out of the barn. She was very quiet about it. I was in the barn with her, but was busy feeding the bull that I had separated from another group of cows, and was also tending to the heifers. When I went back to check on Pressure, she was gone.

It is not unusual for a more mature, established cow to prefer a certain area to have her baby, and Pressure has been around the birthing block a few times. Some cows head for the back of the field, or walk a trail that leads to a meadow near the river, some go up hill to find a quiet area under the tall fir trees. Pressure decided to move to her favorite group of cedar trees, it was within a couple hundred feet of where she had her heifer, Gauge, last year.

I could see that Pressure was in the first stages of labor. She was pacing an area around the tree line and would swish her tail that was held up slightly. She would kick at her belly once and a while, but with all the baby weight pushing at her hips, the kick was merely a back leg raised a few inches off the ground in the direction of her discomfort. Contractions were sporadic, but when she would have one, she would pause momentarily before turning around and sniffing the ground as if a baby had already popped out.

While the rest of the animals were still eating their dinner in the barn, I walked Pressure up from the woods and through a couple of gates and got her into a pen all to herself. I set up some hay for her to nibble and finished with the other chores. I checked on her a couple of times, when I went out to the barn at 8pm. she had just delivered a healthy bull and was busy cleaning him off and softly mooing to him.

Firestone weighed in at 79 lbs. and was trying to talk back to his mother. He was making mewwing noises as she licked him from head to toe. It wasn’t long before he was standing and started to nurse.