Bull!

No, I'm not being rude. Yesterday afternoon Ladysmith finally had her baby. It's a boy calf! The last couple of days she's been walking slower and slower and yesterday her back end puffiness was noticeably puffier. I was just thinking how I should probably clean up the cow potties (patties?) she's been leaving all over the yard when I looked out the window and she was laying down with her head on the ground. Cows don't normally lay flat out like horses when they fall fast asleep so I knew her time had come.

I ran out with my camera and sure enough her back end puffiness had turned to bulging. The time when I first looked out the window was 1:50. By 2:10 it was all over.

It's a good thing she had it now in this mild weather because we have reports that it will be significantly cooler and stormy by the end of the week. It doesn't really matter to these cows because Irish Dexter Cattle are remarkably hardy. It does matter to me because #1: I would be worrying (needlessly, of course) about the newborn; and #2: I would rather be comfortable taking the photos than not. Naturally, #2 would be moot if she had calved in the middle of the night.

Here are the photos of the blessed event. Never mind that in some of them the baby has plopped onto a poo. That's really the mother's fault for not calving in a nice clean sunny spot.

After all the struggling to get up, stay up, and finally walk a bit, just one hour later he was literally running circles around his resting mother.

And here they are this morning.