About 7:30pm Bekah came in the house and said "Mom if you go outside, Matilda will have her baby." So went and checked and sure enough Matilda was in active labor.
Fortunately we had a good friend visiting who was able to help out with the kids, picture taking and general moral support. Once the hooves appeared it seemed to take forever and lots of walking around before she finally laid down for good and got to the heavy part of her labor. I think the calf was finally born around 8:30pm.
I was in the corral area with her, and she didn't seem to mind my presence too much so when the baby was born I was able to get in close for long enough to get its nose cleared and check to see the gender. Definitely a bull calf.
Once the baby was born she didn't seem to know quite what to do, and was head butting him before she started cleaning him up. He was born next to the corral fence, so aunt Maggy was right there getting acquainted.
Matilda wouldn't let me get close, so I went around to the outside of the fence and reached through to help get him dried off since he was shivering. He kept trying to stand, but his feet were getting caught in the fence, and the ground where he was at wasn't very level. So I went back into the corral and my friend managed to shoo Matilda away long enough that I was able to move the calf to more level ground and dry him off a little bit more.
jBekah was watching the whole thing, and called out that we should name him "Oscar" so tTohat is what he is going to be called. This is the second birthing she has gotten to witness this year and she thinks it is "so cool!"
Once Oscar was on his feet, he went looking for his first meal but Matilda was having none of that. Anytime he got close to a teat she would kick him. I finally got a lead rope on her and tied her to a tree, and tried to get her to let Oscar nurse. She let me milk her but wouldn't let him close. (All that stanchion work before hand definitely paid off!) So I got her into the stanchion and milked a bottles worth of colostrum from her, with hardly a protest.
I brought Oscar over and she let him nurse briefly while my hand was on her, but the minute I tried to let him go at it alone she started kicking again. By that time it was well past time for me to milk Mame' so I left the two of them alone and figured I would come back in a few minutes and if they were getting along any better or if I was going to have to bottle feed. Fortunately, when I came back to check on them I could hear him slurping away in the dark, even before I could see him in the beam of the flashlight.
To see larger images of the pictures below, just click on the picture.
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