Archived News

10th December 2011

Park Phoenix served our cows in two goups, the first group of twelve have all calved and are now at Hackhurst and the second group of seven at Churchfield began calving last week.  Unfortunately the first of these cows appeared to be in difficulty; she paced the field awkwardly but there was no sign of the calf and when a bloody discharge emerged, the vet was called immediately.  We walked the cow into the crush and she quietly stood, as Tom did an internal examination.  He found that the placenta had presented first which meant the cow had no means of pushing out her calf, which then died and had to be pulled out by hand. This sort of thing is very sad and we really felt for the cow after she’d carried her calf so well for nine months, it was a beautifully belted heifer calf.

On a positive note, Annie gave birth to a heifer calf overnight and I tagged her this morning. I don’t name the calves with a letter of the alphabet for each year, but simply use names I like.  For a bit of fun we’ve had Trigger, Boycie and Del Boy and this year thinking about ‘The Good Life’; we have ‘Margo’ and now Annie’s calf has been called Babs; Barbara is too long for the label!