Cow Gives Birth to a Stillborn | Could Have Died

That's a baby!

Is she having a baby? She's having her baby. There's nothing coming out yet, but she's about to. There's something weird hanging out. Hey guys, stay back, stay back. There's tissue hanging out. Did she have a baby?

Uh, I think there's something wrong.

Oh, it's a drizzly day. I think it's supposed to rain all week too, but The show and the chores must go on. My future's looking bright. We're gonna cook duck confit according to that for our tacos tonight. Jonah's so excited about this production. Why you get so excited about that?

I don't know. It's fine.

Hopefully tomorrow, depending on when UPS comes. Yeah. You ready to go move some pigs?

No.

At least you're honest. All right, let's take a break and move pigs. Boom! Our cover crop is in. Now that's a crew. All right, we have our new paddock. See, technically we have a gate there. I mean, it's not a solid physical gate like we need, and we'll have one day if we're going to keep this system up. And we have a gate here. So that's the only way I figured it to be able to get gate on both sides for them to be able to come in and then out. And then next move, you build another one just like it off this. They're already across, they're still freaking out.

Keep it going. All right, good.

We did it, guys! Did she have a baby?

Uh, I think there's something wrong.

She's really trying. Maybe it's the placenta. See her looking? It's like she's looking, she's looking for a baby or something.

Attractions are getting closer together. There we go, girl.

She's wanting to stand up. It wasn't easy. That's definitely a hook, Becky. She keeps on getting up and down. And we see some, some hubbage. Contraction still is 2-ish minutes apart. She's laying down, but seems like she wants to get up to push. Looks like she's having another contraction here. I'm trying to see if you want the two hoofs together coming first and then the head. I can't quite I can't quite tell what's coming out. I wish I could tell what that is. Amy's up there, she's getting text reception, communicating with Rebecca. Rebecca's kind of looking into it at home. Look, you can see I got close. That's a tongue. That's the calf's tongue there, that long 4-inch thing. That's its head. The first thing coming out is a— is one hoof. I'd really like to see two hoofs. That'd be a first smooth exit. And then those livery looking things, I don't know what it is. Placenta, probably. So you can see that hoof sticking way out. See it? See the bottom of the hoof? It's white. And then just above the hoof is the head, but I don't see the other hoof. Oh, maybe that's a— is that the hoof behind that? No, I think that's its little— maybe that's a hoof right underneath the head. Okay, you're back and you got a book.

Yes, without the book presentation, which is—

that a normal— you can see it, right? You can see the head.

You need both hooves.

I know. See it? I think it's behind. I'm pretty sure it's right under its jaw.

It's if— if it's as if the head and one hoof is out. Yeah, then you have to push it all back in and get—

I think that's what's happening. That's only one hoof.

No, I saw another one.

Oh, you saw it deeper in?

Yeah, it was behind. Okay, it would be a problem if it was like—

yeah, okay, good.

If it was going— if it was doing this. The second stage, which is what she's in, can last up to 2 hours, which is the pushing stage. Yeah, but it's also often surprisingly quick, giving you barely time to—

okay, so it's been an hour, maybe a little less. You can see that little hoof just barely pushing out.

Bless her.

There's no turning back.

Oh yeah, I know.

Let's watch them. Okay, she's on that slant. Wow, she's still able to push.

I will, I will, if I see what she wants to do. Okay, I'm gonna help it roll over.

Okay, here we go, guys. She didn't lose any progress there. I still see the second hoof.

I wish we had a midwife.

You're gonna have to become the cow midwife.

I need a cow midwife.

But doesn't the midwife help you pull the baby out?

No, she does not. The midwife doesn't pull pull the baby out. The baby— the midwife helps the mother know what to do. Did you hear Jonah, Amy? Where's Stud Muffin? He needs to be helping with this.

He's off. Look at him, he don't care. He's off getting the fresh grass, taking advantage of nobody over there. I can see your eye. His eye. You can see the whole head, the ear, the arms up there beside it. Yeah, she's almost past the little elbow point. On this leg.

She's going to get up.

Here we go. Come on, honey, you can do it.

You can do it. Wow.

Oh wow. Here we go.

If you get up this time, I bet it comes.

Gosh, she's walking around with a cow out her Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes! And she's in the casket, liquid coming out of her mouth.

I hope she's alive.

Hey, Rebecca, I'm not sure this cat's alive. Oh, she's fine.

She's—

I think she's fine. What's this? Wait, hold on, hold on. Give her a moment. She just had birth. Mom will lick her. She'll eat the placenta.

Rub its nose.

I did, I did. I made sure it's got— so when the calf came out, it did have a lot of liquid come out of its mouth.

Oh, back off.

That's okay, it's okay, Mom. Just beware of the horns. She's not aggressive or anything, just she might lift up.

Sad. She went through all that pouring pain for that one.

Let's give her a little bit. Uh, you've got to go to town. Um, give her a moment. Let her eat all that she needs to eat off that. Man, Arun really stepped it up. He saw that we were struggling. He knew we didn't eat breakfast. He came and made us breakfast. What a dude. It's one thing for her to have a calf and then us have to milk once or twice. It's a whole nother if she doesn't have any milk. That's gonna have— let's cross our fingers she's got some milk in there.

Come on, come on, come on, come on.

Oh wow, maybe we can do it.

Hungry for you.

Okay. That's good. Could carry your calf over here.

Yeah, picking up a live calf.

There's no— lock her in. You got her? Wow, good job!

Look, it was a boy.

It was a boy, wasn't it? Yeah, that would have been our beef supply 2022. Let's see, that's our beef supply starting in 2021. That would have been 22, 23.

Gosh, we could do Polly.

This is bad, this is bad. Careful. Oh yeah, all right, give her her— give her her—

whoa, whoa. Okay, that's good.

She is giving down some colostrum, not much though. All right, that's all we got. Gosh, I mean, maybe that's normal. Probably all the little calf would have needed. Josh, my cow guy, says we could just milk her like we normally would once a day. He thought the milk would come in a couple of weeks. All right, Rebecca text me, you know, she sent me that picture to— and Brienne, she's with Brianna. Brianna said, yeah, that looks like the placenta. Placenta was born birth first. It's called premature expulsion of the placenta. And yeah, there's no chance for the calf to survive. That's what gives it— anyway, they're gonna run all kinds of tests. We'll probably know something from them in a few days. We're back home. Flossie is right there. Kind of act like nothing happened. There's vultures about. It's probably looking for the placenta. She stopped bellowing. She was already grazing by the time we left. She'll probably be completely back to normal in just 2 days. All right guys, I've been editing. It's almost— well, it's a little after 4. This needs to be— this needs to be done. Oh shoot, I just spilled that grease. This is one of the best ways to make a day a happy ending, is a nice meal at the end of the day. Always something to be thankful for. My duck breasts turned out amazing. Not quite as beautiful as the book, but almost. The duck confit turned out nicely. We're just gonna shred it and it'll be our taco meat for tonight. Rebecca, I heard back from Josh. I sent him that picture that you, that you had, the placenta coming out, and he's like, yep, that's what did it.

So that was the placenta.

And I said to him, is that, is that just bad luck or is that something we should cull for? Is that genetic? He said totally bad luck, can happen to anybody, any cow. Yeah, he said She could have died. Yeah, Flossie could die. Well, that's why.

So if she would have gone more than 2 hours, we were going to call the vet.

Yeah, he said there can be an infection if it goes too long or whatever. So trying to wrap this up on a happy note, we're all back together, we're all right, Flossie is all right. It could have been a lot worse. We'll be thankful, but she did that like a champ. We're having a nice meal together. And tomorrow's another day, and now we have that experience under our belt. We just become more and more knowledgeable, more and more understandable what's going on.