This morning , as usual, I stumbled out of bed and carried out the usual chores, the first of which is to milk the cow. Stewie is locked away in his little pen all night to allow us access to the milk he would otherwise consume. By the time I get out there at 7-7:30 in the morning, Buttercup is ready to have the pressure eased from her udder and have her breakfast. I am not sure which is more important to her, but I suspect it is the food. Anyway, she is usually a well mannered cow, amenable and tractable. This morning, however, I guess she was having a bad day. I know how she feels. Sometimes I wake up and just want to swing my horns at anyone who irritates me. I don't mind the horn shaking, but when she catches me on the cheek bone with one long pointy horn, I get pretty irritable back. I am not a cow training expert, but she seems to respond well enough with a slap on the belly and an agitated "Hey, don't do that!" But really, one can't allow a cow to use her horns on the person who feeds her and has to milk her.
But I wondered if maybe her foul humour may have stemmed from her coming into heat. That would be quite an exciting development, as we have been trying to get her bred since October. A cow's gestation period is 9 months and breeding in October would mean a calf in late June, early July, a nice warm time of year to bring a baby into the world. Buttercup is a purebred Irish Dexter cow and we wanted to have purebred offspring. As there are no Dexter bulls in the area, we decided AI was the way to go. An internet search turned up a source of semen out in Alberta. Oh, but there is so much more to artificial insemination than finding a dad.
First you must find a place to store the semen and, no, your home deep freeze will not do the job. You need a nitrogen tank. It is not financially viable for us to buy our own tank, not that cost ever stopped us from doing anything for the farm, but I did manage to find a beef farmer who had space in her tank and was happy to let us use it. We are on good terms because I trim her horses feet- no one else is willing to do it because they are so ill mannered. So we have the tank. We get 10 'straws' of semen delivered, semen of a bull, which we discover later, is already deceased. That's a bit creepy but I don't suppose Buttercup will care.
The next step is to find an AI technician. That wasn't so hard, as my farmer friend recommended a guy who lives just down the road. I phone him and he agrees to come to do the job when Buttercup comes into heat.
But here's where the difficulty arises. Turns out, cows are supposed to come into heat every 21 days, but are only fertile for 4-5 hours, so you really have to be on the ball with this one. How do you tell when she is in heat? Easy, when she is with other cows, as they will mount each other, but our Buttercup lives alone with her overfed- and castrated- young son. So, my farmer friend says, borrow our gomer. What? I ask, thinking I hadn't heard her correctly. She explains- a gomer is a bull that has had a vasectomy. He has all the hormones but can't actually breed the cow. When she comes into heat, he will get all excited and we know it is time to call the AI guy. Great idea, we think, only a little daunted by the fact that the gomer is about 6 times the weight of our little Buttercup and is, for all intents and purposes, a bull.
Mary and her husband, Paul, deliver the gomer in mid October. He is huge! But he is gentle, Mary says. We are not so confident and only go into the field with him after throwing him and Buttercup some windfall apples to keep him busy. He towers over her but, yes, he is gentle. Stewie seems to love having a dad to follow around. Buttercup is not at all intimidated. So we wait. Every 21 days she should come into heat. We wait and watch. We even go out with a flashlight a couple of nights, thinking he looked a bit interested earlier, but nothing. After more than a month, she does come into heat. Mr Gomer is not particularly interested, but we call the AI guy anyway.
I think we just missed it, he says. What? We have been waiting for over a month. But he goes and gets a straw and we try anyway. The AI guy tells us we should have her checked by the vet in 60 days. Meanwhile, we send Mr Gomer home. He was not much help and he ate a lot and did I mention we were a bit intimidated by him? We wait, watching to see any signs of a heat cycle. Nothing, which is hopeful. Maybe she is pregnant. Then finally it is time to call the vet. It is not good news. Stewie is not going to have a brother or sister. To make matters worse, it seems she is not cycling. Why not? I ask. Undernourished, the vet says. You mean we have been starving our cow? Not exactly, she says, but she needs more vitamins and minerals. And she probably won't come into heat until February, when the days get longer.
Now Buttercup is in heaven. She went from getting no grain at all on the organic farm that we bought her from, to getting 2 big buckets of nice, molasses coated grain, laced with dried kelp, every day. Sometimes she doesn't even finish her feed, there is so much of it. She looks pretty good to me, but so far no signs of heat. But now it is February, so when she was so grumpy, I thought it looked promising. Sadly, nothing. Seems we will have to wait some more!
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