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Karen McCabe farms with her father Michael McCabe on their farm in Drumlegga, Cloone, Co Leitrim. \Philip Doyle.
After a six-week break, we had two calves born within hours of each other.
The first cow calved on Mother’s Day last year and I was beginning to think she had a calendar hidden under the straw in order to do the same again this year!
However, she popped out a pair of quite large feet on Friday morning and upon handling her, it felt like it was going to be a tight squeeze getting the calf out.
I’m thankful we’re so familiar with both our cows and the bulls we use, as having experience of the same bull in previous years, I knew he had a habit of bringing large shoulders on a calf.
Lynn Ann Such 1960-2021 | News, Sports, Jobs
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Karen McCabe farms with her father Michael McCabe on their farm in Drumlegga, Cloone, Co Leitrim. \ Philip Doyle.
After a long wait of 303 days, our first calf of 2021 finally arrived in the latter days of January.
As expected with that length of gestation, it was a large bull calf, though he only needed a small pull with ropes to deliver him safely.
With the barrage of rain and snow in the days since he was born, it’s no wonder he didn’t want to make an appearance.
The re-modeled creep gates in our shed are working exactly as we hoped and after a couple of days he learned to go in and out of the bedded middle pen on his own. This should mean a big saving on straw for us, as before this we had to bed a corner of each pen for the calves. Hopefully we’ll have two more calves to join him soon enough.