New Life

Yesterday I helped a cow give birth. I filled the role of Assistant Tipper.

NOTE: If you’re really squeamish, you may not want to read this. Cow births involve lots of bodily fluids and whatnot. (Though clearly if you’re really squeamish you should attempt to unsqeamify yourself, and exposing yourself to things such as this may be a good way to make yourself less squeamish.)

I was having a small meeting with my school’s secondmaster, discussing secondary project stuff, when he was notified that one of the headmaster’s cows was having trouble giving birth, and would he please come help? (The headmaster himself was out of town for the day.)

So I explained that I hadn’t seen a cow give birth before, and asked if I could tag along and watch, and he agreed, so we set off to the headmaster’s house. Once there, we saw the cow in question, and the headmaster’s cow herder (who I think is also a relative of his, but I’m not sure) explained that the cow needed to give birth, but refused to lie down. Apparently lying down is an essential part of the giving-birth process.

She had two little calf-feet sticking out of her rear end. Apparently calves come front-feet first rather than head-first, so this protrusion of feet was not an issue.

My secondmaster attempted to get the cow to lie down by holding it by one horn and pressing down on one particular location along its spine, but it refused. This meant that our new plan was to knock the cow over. The secondmaster tried wrapping a rope in a particular pattern around the cow’s torso, with both ends of the rope coming away from the cow between the hind legs, and then pulling, but that also failed to get the cow down.

At this point he sent for the school’s cook, who apparently is an expert cow-birther. Once he arrived, he took over directing the whole operation.

First, we/they untied the cow and took her out of her pen, to an outside area with a bit more room. Then we tied her to a tree, and the cook went up and did the same rope-wrapping thing my headmaster had tried, though he seemed to be a bit more precise with it. Once the rope was ready, three of us pulled on the two rope ends. The cook was standing to the side, and I wasn’t able to see if he gave her a push or not, but in any case she fell over in the opposite direction. It was kind of a rough and sudden fall, and I was very glad that I was not underneath.

The cow looked very alarmed, but seemed content to stay down; nobody had to hold her down or anything. At this point the cook circled around behind her, grabbed the calf’s legs, and started pulling. My secondmaster got down next to him and helped to pry the cow’s vagina open around the calf’s head. There was a lot of fluid involved, some of it blood.

After a short struggle, the calf’s head came entirely out, and apparently that was the most difficult part, as after that the rest of the calf came out quickly, followed by the placenta. The placenta itself was quite large, several inches across, and looked more or less like a semi-transparent white water baloon. I forget exactly how it happened, but shortly afterwards the placenta burst and spilled all over the place. The cook broke the umbilical cord, and the birth was over.

However, the new mom needed to take care of her calf, in particular licking it dry. They untied her, but she didn’t know what to do. She was freaking out, scared of all the people, wondering what was going on, and trying to figure out what to do, looking like she might try to bolt. So then the cook grabbed a piece of placenta and held it against her nose for a few seconds; this seemed to bring her the realization “Oh yeah, I just gave birth! I should take care of my newborn calf!”, and she promptly walked over to her calf and started licking it.

At this point, the ordeal was pronounced “over”, and the cook and secondmaster washed their hands. Everyone dispersed, and I asked my secondmaster about the rope-tying thing.

Apparently, aside from pulling the hind legs to the side, the ropes crisscross over the same spot on the back he had initially pushed down on to get her to lie down; apparently that’s a special spot that makes them want to lie down and/or lose their sense of balance, the rope technique is a way to get more leverage on it.

After this explanation, the secondmaster and I went back to the office and resumed our meeting as if nothing had happened.