Boys! Boys! Boys!!!!!

Today I had a unique opportunity to attend the New York State Fair Dairy Cattle Birthing Center. This is the first year this exhibit has been at the state fair and boy was it a hit!!! The Exhibit was brought to the fair by the New York Animal Agricultural Coalition and Cornell University.  Its goal was to allow those who may not come from a farming background to witness the live birth of a calf and speak candidly with members from all aspects of the dairy industry about animal agriculture and dairy farming.
 

Feeding one of the bulls from yesterday his breakfast!

The cows came from 6 different dairy farms all within an hour from the Syracuse, NY fair grounds.  Each farm supplied 6 cows that came in for a 2 day stay.  The cows were induced so that they would hopefully calve within their time at the fair.  Thursday was the 2^nd day for the cows from this particular farm so three had calved the day before.  All three had male (bull) calves.

The first cow of Thursday, had her water break at 9:30 in the morning.  As we were waiting for the cow to progress further into labor the tent began filling, and filling, and filling with people. By the time the cow was in full labor there had to have been at least 200-300 people in the tent watching.  By noon the first cow had calved with yet another boy!

It was a wonderful opportunity to answer questions that people had about cows in general. Most of the common questions that were asked were things that I have discussed before in previous posts, however I will reiterate the most popular questions asked today.

The most popular questions we had were:

How long is a cow pregnant?  Well the average gestation for a cow is very similar to a human in that it is 9 months or approximately 280 days.

Why don’t you let the calf nurse the mom? This is really for the health benefit of the calf. Although we strive to keep the calving area very clean, it is still not a sterile hospital room. There is still manure and bacteria in the environment.  Because the calf is a newborn, it has no immune system. We want to clean and disinfect the teats of the cow and harvest the colostrum as cleanly as possible rather than have the calf possibly ingest bacteria from the cow’s teats. We also remove the calf from the mom as quickly as possible to ensure that the calf is protected and cared for appropriately in case the mother does not have a good motherly instinct.

What happens to the male calves? Since only the females produce milk, the bull calves are either raised to be used for breeding purposes or sold to be raised for meat. 

My most unusual question of the day was from a young boy in the crowd, who bravely walked through hundreds of people to approach me with the microphone. Now, any dairy or beef farmer reading this may chuckle to themselves as I did when the question was asked.   

The question was:

Can cows have mental problems?  Now this question was being asked as the head of the calf was in the birth canal and only the front feet and tongue were sticking out. I mentioned chuckling to myself earlier because those of us that work with cattle day in and day out, understand that every cow has their own personality and yes, sometimes they are quite crazy and we do wonder if there is a mental problem…. In this case, I presume the boy was wondering if the calf was getting enough oxygen with the head stuck in the birth canal.  Because the umbilical cord was still attached, we assured him that the calf was still getting oxygen, but it is something that we carefully watch to be sure the calf hasn’t been in the birth canal with the umbilical cord pinched off, for TOO long causing oxygen deprivation and therefore some neurologic issues.

As we were finishing up havesting the colostrum from the first cow, a second cow’s water broke.  She had her baby around 2:30pm and it was the 5^th bull of the group!!! When we look at yearly averages, it truly does end up 50:50 males to females. However, there may be stretches of time where there are a large number of bulls born and then another stretch of all females.  This farm just happened to bring 5 cows that were all pregnant with bulls! The 6^th cow had not yet calved by the time I had to leave so maybe the 6th time is the charm for a girl!

The farm owner harvesting the colostrum from the first mom of the day!

I could go on and on about questions that were asked and the answers to those questions. I strongly encourage you to ask questions of myself or other members of the dairy industry if you have them. As our t-shirts said today:  “Ask me! There’s no UDDER place to get the answer!!!”

Overall it was a wonderful opportunity for members of the dairy industry to share our story.  I had countless people come up to me throughout the two births today  and tell me how much they learned from their time at the Birthing Center.  I truly feel blessed to have been born, raised and continue to work in the dairy industry. Although we still face challenges, this industry is truly amazing, and there are so many people that work so hard to ensure that the products you get from a dairy farm, are the most wholesome products they can be!

 I am so proud of the hard work that went into this exhibit from various people, the farmers that took time out of their very busy schedules to share their personal stories, and tirelessly care for these animals.