With calving season calming down it was now time to jump into mating season to get the cows pregnant for the next season. I had 12 or so farms assigned to me to take care of so I started going out to have meetings to chat about their plan to getting the cows pregnant. This was a harder task than I imagined. Yes, we have a tight timeline in the US, but getting 1500 cows pregnant in 12 weeks can be a daunting task with 7 employees. We would talk about the plan for AI, mating programs for the cows that weren’t cycling, managing of the bulls for clean-up at the end, and anything else they were concerned about. I was scared stiff because with each new season brought a new set of terms and management practices I had no clue about. So its safe to say, I asked a lot of questions, did a lot of reading, and generally bull-shitted my way through the season. I don’t think I did half bad to be honest and the vets and farmers were very good about answering my seemingly stupid questions and were quite understanding when I was up front and told them I was new to this, or said, ‘well in the US, we’d do this, but here…” Some of them were actually receptive to some of my crazy North American ideas but for the most part we stuck to the Kiwi way of the world.
The middle of calving season was one of my last busy weekends on call and what a weekend it turned out to be. I was woken up at 4:35am Saturday morning because my bed was shaking back and forth, there was a great rumbling sound outside, and the dishes in my sink rattling. We were having an earthquake! A 7.1 magnitude earthquake. Coming from the mid-west we don’t get earthquakes but I’d heard about them from California friends, and I knew the New Zealand had 100’s of small ones a year. But I wasn’t prepared for this kind of ‘a little one.’ The shaking went on for about a minute and then everything stilled. I slowly got out of bed and checked what I could but being the middle of the night there wasn’t much to see. I attempted going back to sleep but I was woken 15min later with a call for a calving. So up I got and a few minutes later Barb came running out to check that I was all right, surprised to see me dressed. I had no idea what the road conditions were and the news hadn’t made it to the television yet obviously, but I ventured out to find everything intact along my route. Arriving at Ernst’s place, I asked how the cow’s had dealt with the California foot massage? I don’t think he had found it very funny but I was trying to lighten the mood since he seemed a bit stressed. We calved live twin heifer calves from the cow and at least that brought a smile to his face.
I had another call after that one, and finally made it home about 7:30 to find the news still hadn’t reported anything. But I soon found out via internet that Christchurch was a bit of a mess. Roads, cracked, buildings falling down, liquefaction of the sandy soil in some places and 100’s of people heading towards the Port Hills in case of a tsunami. Being an inland quake, there was no tsunami except in people’s pools and ponds. Damage to Ashburton was nil, just a few cracks in some of the dairy sheds, but near the epicenter some of the hedgerows had moved several feet, there were cracks through paddocks, and one of the roads had a section move over a few feet. Ross came home from milking and told us he had been half way through milking when the quake hit and the cows had done well besides sh**ting everywhere and he watched the walls and pipes weave around like snakes. Other people told me that cows that were walking to the sheds had simply laid down on the track waiting for the quake to finish.
Since then there have been hundreds of aftershocks, some small rumblings, and some larger ones that did more damage but on a whole, everywhere besides Darfield where the epicenter was and Christchurch was just fine. People were still just a bit freaked out and understandably. It will take years for people to recover the damages and get everything back in working order.
On Sunday of my weekend was also the day I had 3 calvings at one farm. To be honest they were quite easy, but the guys were incredibly tired from the 900 cows they had already calved, on top of fresh cows and milking, and the earthquake for that matter. Now Craig at Woodland farms is a force to be reckoned with, the manager, a hilarious man, and it doesn’t take him long to take the piss out of you for something you said. But you will always be laughing when he does, or blushing. Craig is also a common visitor to the vet clinic, or drugs and supplies, for a coffee, or just plain banter and a story or two. Poor Amy had a miserable calving at this farm where after 3 hours it was decided to give up, but the next day Amy went back, determined to get the calf out, and she did. Craig also has a habit of writing poems about people so after Amy’s incredible feat, in came Craig to the clinic with a newly composed poem of her misadventure.
So when I got the call to come out to Woodlands, I was a bit worried that I was going to meet with disaster as well, knowing that these guys are on the top of their game and don’t just call for anything. After pulling the first one in a record time of 7min, they motioned me over to another. My helper had to run off to get some metabolic to the give the first cow and in the mean time I managed the pull the second one out with my bare hands. Having decided I was the luckiest darn vet in the world, when Craig and the worker finally arrived back to ‘assist’ me I opened up the top of my coveralls to reveal the superman logo on the fleece I was wearing. No sooner had I cleaned up, had some lunch and a short nap, Craig called again for another calving. I was resigned to the fact that this was going to be the ‘big’ on so with renewed ambition I headed out there and after some pulling with the calving ropes this one popped out as well. Craig, looking very tired and a bit embarrassed said he just hadn’t been sure about this one and didn’t want to hurt the cow. After a few bad ones everyone gets a little gun-shy and mostly they just want reassurance they are approaching these the right way. No worries, mate. Happy to help, that’s what we’re there for.
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