Not giving up

I am very tired today. One of our young cows almost lost her calf while trying to have it. The calf's leg was caught on his mothers pelvic bone and she was unable to have him. My brother and I worked for hours to save them.

For a while we thought we were to late to save the calf. We thought he had died inside her. We were upset, but knew that we had to get the calf out of the mother or we would lose them both.

Finally we were able to get the leg lose from inside his mother and help pull him out. While his mother pushed, we pulled. When he was half way out, we realized he was still alive. We continued to work, and got him all the way out. He was extremely weak and both mother and calf were exhausted.

In the past 14 hours we have been able to get them back to the barn and have managed to get some milk replacer into him. He is still not strong enough to stand (which is a bad sign) but he is able to drink on his own from the bottle (a good sign). Our next goal is to get him strong enough so that he can start nursing from his mother.

She was in labor for at least 6 hours before we managed to deliver the calf completely, and he was trapped inside her unable to move or breath properly. Yet they both survived. True fighting spirit.

I wanted to name him GSP, but my brother thought Rocky was cuter. So Rocky it is. If he survives the night. Bottom line, he didn't give up. We can all learn something from that.