Wake up! A calf is standing up in the pen next to Verbena!
At 11:30 pm on March 22nd I woke up and checked the Reolink app on my phone. Verbena was not in labor, but looked a bit uncomfortable, lying down, then getting up, and lying down again.
“She’s going to calve by morning,” I whispered.
At 1:43 am on March 23rd I checked the camera on my phone again.
And there it was!
We were lucky. Verbena presented a textbook calving. Delivery with no complications, a robust and vigorous calf, an experienced momma who knew just what to do, and a bright calf who already was heading for the milk bar.
Let me back up. Successful calving, easy or complex, is not just dependent on the day of arrival.
Shat Acres Verbena was due to calve on March 24th. I knew this because I watched Rocky "tailing her" for about 48 hours. Writing down that date, and calculating approximately 283 ahead, I had a calving date. Twenty one days later, I watched to see if Rocky was interested in Verbena again. He could care less about her at that time frame. I was pretty sure I had the correct date. Preparing for an uneventful calving like we were blessed to have, or an eventful calving when we are not so fortunate, begins long before baby arrives.
For Shat Acres, that preparation spans over a half-century. More on that later.
A week prior to her due date Verbena was moved from ‘general population’ to the pasture closer to the barn where we could monitor her more easily. She was combed out to get rid of any manure under her tail and on the hindquarters. Her udder was combed, tangles or manure tags removed so that when the calf tried to nurse it found a teat rather than a hair tangle or manure.
Verbena’s udder was becoming enlarged and her vulva swollen. On the 21st I checked her udder, and milk expressed easily when a teat was squeezed. She was getting close to calving. The morning of the 22nd we noticed a long mucous discharge. Time to put Verbena into the clean, straw filled pen waiting for her in the barn. I had already checked my records on Verbena’s past calvings. She always delivered on her due date, or 1-2 days later. It looked like she would be true to her history.
During the day Verbena hung out in the barn, not particularly pleased with being closed in, but she had 'been there done that' before so with water and plenty of good hay she tolerated her confinement. By evening nothing dramatic was occurring. Cattle and humans were bedded down for the night.
Up until December 2023, impending calf arrivals entailed multiple alarm settings and night barn runs to check on the status of a cow due to calve. Installing cameras in the barn to monitor pens inside the barn as well as paddocks outside has been a boon for us in our preparations for calving. Having new developments in the stages of calving at our fingertips is invaluable for our stress level and a potential successful outcome to parturition.
I developed our Shat Acres "Before Calving" checklist and a list of items we use when the directive “Bring the Toolkit” comes from Ray. Not all steps or items will be applicable to all farms and folds, nor are we able to complete all tasks before every birth. Your farm may have additional helpful strategies to prepare for calving. If so, leave them in the comments to help us get better at what we see as our most important task, to SAVE EVERY CALF.
Shat Acres' fifty-year preparation for Verbena's new baby girl began in 1966. It was that year that Shat Acres Carroll Shatney purchased his first Highland cow. ( www.shatacres.com Our Story: Chapter 1) That Highland had traveled East on a railroad car. Carroll purchased the Highland cow from a friend of his who had a heart attack and needed to sell his cattle, one of which was a Highland. Carroll added the Highland cow to his Ayrshire dairy herd, paying $50 for her which he always joked was more than she was worth. He promptly fell in love with that gentle long-horned, long-haired girl, who turned out to be XX Eldonn's Lassie, born in 1956 at Baxter Berry's XX Ranch in South Dakota and descended from the first Highland bull imported from Scotland. Scottie, as she was called at Shat Acres, was registered #2249 with the American Scotch Highland Cattle Association (as it was called at that time). Carroll quickly began looking for other Highlands to add to his fledgling Highland fold.
In 1966 Highland cattle were a threatened species and hard to find, particularly in New England. Cows were hard to find with Highland bulls even more scarce. By providence, the dairy herd's artificial inseminator had a few straws of Highland semen in his tank. That semen was drawn from LC King's Pride, bred by Keith Crew of Yankton, South Dakota. Keith Crew was an eccentric character, who was always busy with some sort of invention. In 1982, Keith developed a computer program on one of the first Apple computers to balance cattle rations. He served as President of the National Scotch Highlander Association in 1969. And he raised a purebred herd of Highland Cattle one of which was LC King's Pride, considered one of the finest heritage Highland bulls ever produced, full of heritage Scottish genetics. King's Pride's semen was in a tank owned by the Curtis Candy Company--founded in 1916 known not only for confectionary brands like Baby Ruth and Butterfinger, but also a leading enterprise in artificial insemination. Carroll Shatney's first AHCA registered cattle were sired by LC King's Pride semen, sitting in that Curtis Candy tank in a dairy barn in the little town of Greensboro Bend, Vermont. LC King's Pride's registration is an impressive combination of Scottish and Baxter Berry's XX genetics.
This infusion of Scottish genetics remains the foundation of Shat Acres closed maternal line for fifty years. Carroll Shatney was known as having an eye for cattle, and in 1996 purchased Lance of Gordon's Fold from Gordon Caldwell at the Fryeburg Fair in Maine. Caldwell was a belly gunner in World War II, a dangerous role to play. He imported a copious amount of Scottish semen, further consolidating the Scottish heritage genetics in Shat Acres females. Lance of Gordon's Fold's lineage has many of the Scottish genetics sought after by Highland breeders today.
Who's Hill Scorpio, bred by Hugh Wilson was purchased from the Bull Test in Harrisburg, PA in 2001. Huge was a meticulous breeder and a walking genetic encyclopedia. He had purchased his first Highland cow from Carroll Shatney, after seeing Shat Acres Highlands exhibited at the Tunbridge Fair in Vermont. Hugh fell in love with Highlands, as Carroll had years earlier. Hugh spent so much time at the Fair and teased his wife that he was seeing a blond at the Fair. He was--but it was one of Carroll's long haired, long horned Highlands. Scorpio was loaded with champion genetics and continued to ensure the closed fold of Shat Acres females possessed the best, highly heritable Highland genetics.
Our current herd sire Skye High Glen Rock from Skye High Farms in Coldwater Michigan, has been all that we could have hoped for to continue enhance and preserve Shat Acres champion genetics. "Rocky", as we call him is long, straight, and incredibly docile. He brings us full circle, as generations back in his lineage is Shat Acres Satin, a twin to Shat Acres Silk. Rocky has sired over a hundred superb Highland calves in the six years we have been using him. You might wonder how we can use a bull for that long? Because we sell all of Rocky's calves, we do not have to be concerned with him breeding his daughters. We are in a different place than many Highland breeders, downsizing rather than increasing our fold.
Because we have a closed maternal line, with no outside female purchased in nearly fifty years and breeding each one to Skye High Glen Rock, every Shat Acres calf produced is a cookie-cutter offspring to the ones produced the previous year, and the previous year, and the previous years. Each calf has the traits Shat Acres has been breeding for, for over half a century--docility, maternal instinct, good legs and feet, excellent udders, long straight and square backs and longevity. Because we are downsizing, there will be less and less Shat Acres offspring each year. We take comfort in knowing Shat Acres will live on in the genetics of other Highland breeders who have purchased and care for our Shat Acres Highlands.
That half-century of careful planning--with some luck from Curtis Candy's semen tank--went into preparing for the arrival this week of Shat Acres Verbena's little girl. Welcome to the fold--may you go forth and do good work for the Highland breed.