For the first time (for me) last night I was witness to a birthing.
A calf birthing that is.
Last night my wife and I were working with a horse in the round pen at one of my Father-in-Laws farms (He has two small farms that are seperated by a few miles).
We often try to work with that horse, in a probably wasted effort to keep her from turning totally wild as she does no get ridden nearly enough.

Just so my other fellow city folks know, farm life does not go down like in the feel good Disney movies.
Father-in-Law called from his other farm to say he had a cow ready to give birth and there were some problems.
We put the horse up and drive over to the other farm and commenced trying to push/cut the cow out (using the trucks and on foot) from the herd to move her to where we could work on her without the other cows (and bulls) interfering.
That was an adventure in itself.
Eventually we were able to snag her legs and get a rope on her neck.
Limiting the cow's movement was very important for the cow, the calf and every human as well.
The cow was basically tied up in the rope, legs, neck, etc. right next to one side of the truck.
My wife was hanging onto the cows tail (while standing in the bed of the truck).
I was hanging onto the loose end of the rope holding the cow, Father-in-Law was at the business end of the cow along with one of his neighbors, trying to help with the birth.

The cow was not happy at all, continuously trying to break free, rocking the truck, worrying all of us that she would kick backwards with her one free rear leg.
She worked herself into a worse bind (in the rope) and started choking herself with the lasso around her neck…
Which in essence actually helped, as she started calming down a lot.
Eventually my wife lost grip and had to release the cow's tail, which caused the cow to loose traction in the mud, and she toppled over onto her side.
Which helped even more as she wont kick (so I was told) while lying on her side and the preasure on the rope tied to her neck also was eased up.
I was able to tie the rope off at that point since she was no longer struggling against it.
And I then walked to the business end of the cow to try to help pull the calf out.
We knew by then the calf was dead, but if we did not pull it out we had no doubts but that the cow would die too.
After a lot of pulling and tugging the calf eventually came out.
(Wont ever forget that)…
We do not know if the cow will live, but she was breathing when we left her.
She never tried to get back up though, so chances are she did not make it through the night either.

Reminds me… all of the cow stuff described above was done in the pitch-black dark of night… with no moon and with clouds covering all the stars.
And just to make it fairer, all of my Father-in-Laws cows are pitch black as well.

Farm life does not go down like in the feel good Disney movies.

UPDATE: The cow lived through the night and should be fine.

Sounds rough, John, but I'm glad the cow made it.

I grew up on a farm, and can attest to what you're saying!

We have close family friends that have had 7 cows give birth in the past 2 days...so far everythings been good but they are totally exhausted...glad I went into the computer field