Our First Jersey Cow Birth and Homeopathy for Cows and Calf
The brain is a funny thing! We got our dear Fern girl last in spring of 2022. She had a young bull calf by her side and we were told that she had been with a bull but was not confirmed bred. This is farmer talk saying she had been in a field with a man but no one saw any action and they had not pregnancy checked her. Pregnancy checks can go a few different ways....
Option 1: Put on one of those gloves that goes to your shoulder reach in the cows butt, yes it’s butt and feel for the uterus. I attempted this recently with a friend guiding me on another cow, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Maybe it’s all those years checking cervixes on pregnant women in the hospital.
Option 2: You can get at home pregnancy test for cows!! Problem is they are blood only. I have started IV’s and drawn labs on hundreds of women, but coming at a cow with a needle feels very very different. I haven’t gotten the courage to try yet. Here are the tests I purchased but never used.
Option 3: Have your vet out and either blood or palpate pregnancy.
Option 4: Calf bump. The left side of the animal is LUNCH, Left is Lunch. So you’ll want to go to the right side. You’ll pushes on the cows side and see if anything pushes back.
Option 5: ...
Option 5 was the option we chose as complete novices.
So Fern is here and she is lovely, except once a month she would get stompy and rude, sometime she would have mucous discharge from her vulva, her bull calf would try to mount her. I chatted with some more experienced friends and we all decided she was not pregnant because she was having obvious heat cycles, and all those signs were fertility signs. So we borrowed a friends bull and had a shot gun wedding. Lloyd and Fern they were so sweet together. A few months later he goes back to his farm and I am unsure if she is pregnant or cycling again.
We bring Lloyd back over in December. In November we had a very experienced rancher over and he looked at Fern and said. “Wow!! That’s a very pregnant cow.” I said you think? I didn't think she was pregnant. He goes over and feels her belly, calf bumps the side, and does something else I’ve never seen. “Wow!! That is a very very fat cow.” From that moment on the idea of pregnancy was out of my brain. The expert had spoken, case closed.
---This is a lesson I had to learn in motherhood and it applies here too. Sometimes the experts are wrong, sometimes the experts are not up to date. Take the time and research everything that is suggested to you. Sit with your options (one of them to do nothing even though that isn’t always offered) and pick the thing that will create the most peace.---
So now I’m a little worried, why is my cow fat, she has normal bones showing, but her belly is so big!! There must be something wrong, I start researching hay belly and infection. Nothing matches, we feed our girls very well. I’m stumped but still slightly worried.
On 1/21 Ryan calls me from the barn. He has been milking more this winter so I can rest. Him calling usually means there is an emergency so my heart beat picks up a bit. “You aren’t going to believe it!! Fern is pregnant, her calf just kicked me in the head!!” Sure enough I go out and you can see a large strong calf kicking through Fern’s belly. How did we miss it for so long.
I can not stress it enough to have friends with skills and knowledge. Friends who are willing to come over and look at your pregnant cow with you. It was so helpful to call our friend over to look at Fern and calculate dates. “You sure she couldn’t be due in June I ask?” “No way.” He says. So she’s been pregnant the whole time?!?!?! And she’s due in a couple weeks!!! My mind was blow. Let me tell you... my experience as a labor and delivery nurse has given me confidence in animal birthing when it should not. I have been wrong so many times. (We still don’t know for sure if Petunia the mini donkey is pregnant or not.) Good thing I can laugh at myself. We chose to dry her off right away and in hindsight I would not do that again. She only got 2 weeks and it wasn’t enough and I think it delayed lactation. Gouda her bull calf was born 12 days later on 2/2.
Because we hadn’t taken proper care of Fern during her pregnancy ie not giving her ample dry off time (aka not milking her for 90 days before birth), and because she was on a higher protein diet she was at risk for birth complications. I became obsessed with what to do if she got sick. Milk fever was the main concern. Basically calcium levels drop as the colostrum/milk pull it from the body.
This is a random website that does a good job of explaining milk fever.
I gave her the prophylaxis homeopathy shared in the images I made. After the birth she seemed off. Her eyes looked wild and she seemed over excited. I gave her a dose of Belladonna, Aconite, and the conventional oral calcium supplement. Can someone please create affordable organic food based minerals for animals?!?! This stuff has food coloring in it. It’s for cows and they dye it! You will be hearing a lot about minerals over here because they really matter, and because of current farming practices most the soil, plants, animals and humans are deficient.
These remedies can be used for other animals or even humans that match the descriptions. That’s why I love homeopathy so much. Once you learn the personality of a remedy you use all over.
Fern had never had mastitis but here’s what I found.
Here are some more remedies that might be useful as you adventure into the wonderful life with dairy cows.
We got Fern figured out, the remedies and one tube of calcium had her acting mostly normal. Fern was still being a little strange with Gouda so we had we kept an extra eye on him to be sure he was thriving. I hate hats on newborn babies so of course I hate coats on newborn animals. —-Smelling our young is one way we as mammals bond!!—- Gouda was shivering and Fern wasn’t staying that close so we reluctantly put a coat on him. That afternoon he went from up and thriving to down! We scrambled to support him. We brought him in the house because he was so listless. In the house he seemed ok so I thought I had overreacted. Ryan carried him back out, back out I decided I had made a horrible mistake and he needed to be in the house. My poor husband dragging this huge animal all over the farm.
We had made it 2 years as farmers/homesteaders/ whatever the heck we are doing, and I had not bought a thermometer. I do not know why I felt so resistant to it. With a calf down in the living room I ran to the store to get a thermometer and a calf bottle. We live in near a tiny town. The little ACE usually lets me down, but today luck is on my side.
I gather the supplies I need and come home to a calf who looks even worse. He had not energy, temp shows hypothermia, and he has no suck reflex. I give aconite for cold wind exposure because it was freezing out. Gelsenium because he seems dizzy, dopey and droopy, and carbo veg because he is not well. They help but it’s not enough. He is covered in blankets next to the fire trying to warm up, and we gave him a shot of BOSE. Not how I want to be supporting my animals, but it was an emergency. Nothing really seems to stick. He would perk up and then flop back over.
Finally we try the Madigan Squeeze. He has had multiple doses of remedies and I could tell he wanted to pull out of it, but he couldn’t. The squeeze changed everything. As soon as I released the pressure he was bright eyed and trying to stand. It was so incredible. Gouda had some low energy days while working to increase Fern’s milk supply, but now he is a happy thriving calf running all over.
