I crashed the tractor on the nineteenth of December last. This forced me to move the cows from Ballinacloghy to Creganna for the winter. Brian Tarpey did it for me with his tractor and large cow trailer. He failed to bring two black cows, who escaped . Cracked cunts One subsequently did a runner and calved in deep cover a mile from where she was last seen and Cracked Cunt Two who as it turned out needed a C section. I only bring this up to say both ladies had a bit of form in the temperament stakes. They both spent the winter with the bull in the fields behind my house. Plenty of silage, plenty of grass. Maybe a bit too fat.I knew she was a small cow, she is more or less purebred Aberdeen Angus so I kept a good eye on her.I didn’t have her on my dodgy list though, she had calved without incident twice earlier, once before to the big Charolais.Yesterday morning I got up and found her in the field beside the dolmen, against the wall. She had clearly been in labour for some time and nothing was sticking out of her fanny except a long streak of what looked like afterbirth, though this was just her normal waterbag remains.
I knew putting her in would be a problem if I was on my own, so I decided to use Kathleen and the Cherokee as my sheepdog. I rang a very good friend and neighbour and he was there in five minutes , after me ringing him before eight in the morning. The three of us were needed to round her up, she charged me once or twice, and the jeep was invaluable. Got her in the crush, I went through the hygiene formalities and stuck in a gloved hand. She was very narrow, I could feel the calf coming , could feel his two front feet and his head , but kind of sensed that he was a big bastard. After some pretty tentative tying of ropes on the legs, we pulled gently with the jack, if that’s not a contradiction in terms. No sign of the head coming, it was not budging.
I rang Norman. He was reluctant but came anyway. He stuck in his hand, got us to jack a bit more, took off the jack, put a rope around the calf’s head and tried to get the head while we were getting the legs. No good, I asked him what did he think. He said “Borderline”. I knew then for a fact that the calf not alone was not borderline but was a surefire fucking giant because
Norman always fancies his chances of whipping it out the back door and never before, in my time anyway had expressed doubt. He explained that he didn’t do C sections anymore, after all he is around the eighty mark, and pretty frail and that was good enough for me.
I rang every vet in the west of Ireland, eventually got Dave Fitzgerald from St Mary’s Road in
Galway. Fair play to him, I am not his client and he did not know me from Adam and a C section is shitty work compared to worming a few dogs which would pay the same.
He finished doing a caesarean on a sheep and came out to me arriving at about one in the afternoon, the cow at this stage being sick since seven in the morning when I noticed her. He has the essential components of a large animal vet, bravery self confidence and ability to rough it. He got stuck in straight away and with the help of me, Mike Qualter and Henry Kearney whipped the calf out the side in very short order, stitched her up, injected her, left me with another injection and headed off again. The two boys and me put the crazy bad-minded dangerous bitch into a pen with the calf. I had milked her when she was still drowsy and had given him his first feed so she was safe, clean and comfortable for the night.
I fed her later but could not countenance going in the pen with her, she was looking to charge the whole time, so just chucked it at her.
Today, with Gerald, I gave her the injection, eartagged the calf and let them off. She went grazing for fifteen minutes then, when she thought she was no longer under observation, flopped down on the ground like a bag of spuds.
I was a pretty nervous boy looking at the rest of them since. One calved in jig time about three o clock today and another calved at about six, an equally big calf but with no intervention. Not a huge cow either.
Farming analysis: Mistake One. Cow selection, she was too small to breed to a charolais, last year she was far thinner and had a heifer calf so I just got lucky. You aren’t always lucky.
Mistake Two. Ramshackle preparation. Boundaries not secure, cows on point of calving should be in a spot where it’s a one man operation to secure and examine her; half the work was rounding her up.
Mistake three. Vet no longer up to it. Switch testing to professionals so if an emergency comes, they know who you are
Wont act on any of these mistakes.
Won’t act on one because I hate culling cows, love their diversity, love the useless and cracked ones as much as the Rolls Royce. Often give a cow too many even breaks
Won’t act on two because of the nature of me. I’m a very disorganised bastard.
Won’t act on three because old Norman is an absolute fucking hero, who came day or night, in the most desperate situations and conditions and I’m not going to sack someone like that.
So expect more emergencies
Expect more work
Pure stupidity.
