New Zealand Life

Kid's Club AKA Calf's Club

March-May 2012

We started breding our cows in June 2011, so our calves would be born around fall of 2012 (February through April). In February we had begun looking for calves on the green hillsides. We went to the property (EVER) nearly every day to "check on the cows" and see if someone was giving or had given birth to a furry black creature.

On February 17, we found our first calf. It was a baby boy; it umbilical cord was still pretty fresh, so we figured it had probably been born that day.
After that, we found calves nearly every two or three days. Our cows were having no difficulties in calf birth, and we hoped the good birthing streak would continue for the rest of the breeding season.

We were hoping for lots of heifers (females), so that our breeding herd would increase. We seemed to have no luck in the section for a very long time. Our first ten calves were baby bulls. It wasn’t until the 11 calf that we got a female. About time we got a heifer; we were beginning to think we wouldn’t get any. Soon after, we got a few more heifers.

It was around early March that we began to realize how all the calves seemed to stick together like a big ol’ group of friends. Just one huge bunch of black dots on the green hills. Like pepper on green ice cream. They would all run and graze together, with just a cow or two around to "supervise" them. This grouping became known as the “Kid’s Club”.
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There was only one problem we had with the calving, and that turned out not to be much of a problem at all. Once, we found a little calf lying on the side of the hill. The cows and other calves were on the complete other side of the paddock munching away at the grass, not a care in the world about this calf. Mom and Dad debated for a few minutes on just what should be done with this apparently forgotten and ‘lost’ calf. Mom won (of course) and so I grabbed the calf by the ears and wrestled it to a stand still. Dad and I then lifted it into the back of the Polaris Ranger and held it down as we drove it to the cows. We let it out and waited for its mother to come running up to it and lick it and nudge it into milking position like the movies.

Instead, the calf went up to about four different cows, all which kicked it off. The poor thing was foaming from the mouth as it stumbled around as the cows watched it like it was an extraterrestrial being. Then, it cried out a doleful ‘moooo.’ The cry caught one cow’s attention, and slowly but surely, the calf and mother got back together. We stayed until we saw the calf milking (and had taken some pictures of it) before leaving.
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Towards the end of March and beginning of April, we began to count the calves. Each time we went to the property, there seemed to be yet another calf waiting to be officially added to the number of calves in the Kid’s Club. Our last calf was born on April 25, 2012. We castrated the bull calves 1 ½ months later, and found that we had 17 boys and 8 heifers. We kept 4 boys as bulls for future breeding. We are now rebreeding our cows, and plan on having calves in October and November.

~ Julia ~