Ultrasounding the Heifers, or "How Bossy Gets Her Big Girl Tag"...

I know some of you just read that, and are thinking, "Wait a minute.  Did she just say they ultrasound the heifers? Isn't that an OB procedure they do on pregnant women?"

Yes, it is.  And pregnant cows, too.  Which is part of the reason my dear husband acted like such a smarty pants when we had our doctor's appointments with each child.  He was positively blase' about the whole deal, because, frankly, if you've seen one ultrasound, you've seen them all, in his mind.  There was no choking up, no tears of wonder.  Nope.  He and the technician were pointing out things and talking about measurements, and I was squinting at a blurry black-n-white-n-grey screen, hoping to see something that looked like a hand...recognisable and distinct.  But I digress...

We ultrasound the heifers, the coming two-year olds, that have been bred for the first time, to get an approximate date of calving and the sex of the calf.  It's great, because we are able to sort off the heifers that are really early or really late calvers, so we only have to get up around the clock for 2 1/2 weeks in March, rather than 6 1/2 weeks.  It hasn't improved the morale in the calving barn, at all, but at least the intense crabbiness is a bit shorter lived. 

The vet that does the ultrasound is from Baker, and he's in such demand that you have to call a month in advance, bribe his secretary with chocolate and/or flowers, conduct covert investigations on when the neighbors are getting THEIR heifers ultrasounded, and then, finally, just beg to be put on the roster.  (It's not QUITE that involved, but it's starting to get close.)  We were told he'd ultrasound our heifers right before dark on Sunday night, or start right before daylight on Monday morning.  And he was NOT kidding.

We gathered the 113 unsuspecting little heifers yesterday morning and brought them to the pasture next to the house.  At 4 PM, we gathered them out of that pasture into the next stage of the holding operation, into the lower pen.  And then we waited until dark, Vern and I pacing a groove in the linoleum of Naomi's kitchen.  Wayland deals with it much differently, and retreats to the computer or behind a magazine.  Finally went home to put the kids to bed, and got the call that he'd be there and ready to go at 6 in the morning.  (He stayed at Vern and Naomi's that night.)

This morning, before the raccoons were out of the trashcans, we were back at the Boss's house, ready for action.  And action means ultrasounding 100 cows an hour! 

Vern brings the heifers down the alley and loads them, our neighbor Melvin coaxes them in the chute and gives them a shot once he hears the word (pregnant), Wayland catches the cow in the chute and rearranges tags (cuts out fly tags, puts in big girl tags).  The vet is coveralled and has a glove up to his armpit, holding a wand that gives the images.  He inserts his arm in the cow, up to his armpit, and tells me (the bookkeeper) whether the cow is bred (pregnant or open), how long she's been bred (# of days), and whether the calf will be a bull or heifer calf.  Then he puts the Ivomec on her back, OR marks her with a pretty pink grease mark if she's open, and we turn her out.  This all happens very quickly, as you might guess, if you think about 100 cows in 60 minutes. 

A good rate of bred versus open is about 90:10 percent, and this year we were 94:6 percent.  And one of those 7 open heifers was what is termed a "freemartin", a female twin to a bull calf.  They get too much testosterone in the womb, and are rendered sterile. In fact, as my father-in-law puts it, they have a "growth" or basically, testicles.  They are almost 99.9% sterile, our vet explained, except rarely they are bred.  He said he knew of one that was bred, and the ranchers named her "Blue Moon". 

After haircurling coffee, and a couple cookies, the vet loads up and heads off to the next ranch, and we sort the opens from the bred heifers.  The open heifers will be hauled to Miles City to be sold in the sale yards, and the bred heifers are returned to pasture with thier big girl tags, the number they will have as a cow for the rest of their Lang's Fork career. Later this fall, we will sort off the heifers that are very early calvers or very late, and sell them as bred heifers, and they will go on to calving careers on another ranch. The heifers this year are all tagged with numbers beginning with "8" because they were born in 2008; 800-8106.  When we look at the tag in the pasture, we can tell how old the cow is by the beginning number. 

I wish we had pictures, but there's no one to take them, because we all have jobs that require concentration and immediate action! The heifers look at us a lot differently, now, and they have acquired an air of maturity, in the last 6 hours.  Or perhaps that's just wariness.  Either way, they are on their way to the sale barn or to motherhood next spring.