Little Men of Mine
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Monday Funday
This summer, my local mom friends and I decided that we'd do something fun with all of our kids every Monday. Some of the events are bigger, requiring coordination, carpools and cash. Other times we just pack a picnic lunch and gather at a nearby park or pool. Yesterday, we went on the coolest field trip to a real working dairy farm, where we learned all about the milking process, birth and milking cycles, and manure as a renewable source of energy, and even saw a "4-d" movie complete with vibrating seats and squirting water.But the best part--even better than the fresh cheese and ice cream we got to sample--was seeing a calf born. When you first walk into the main lobby of the dairy, there are big "birth announcements" posted, indicating how many boys and girls have been born on that day. The website boasts that about 80 calves are born there per day! Well, we were just getting ready to go into the movie when our tour guide announced a change of plans. A cow was about to deliver, so we needed to hustle on over to the birthing barn, pronto! As our group of 6 moms and 17 kids settled onto the bleachers to watch through a window, the poor mama cow was lying on her side in a bed of hay with two hooves sticking out of her rear end. For the next 20 minutes, we watched as the contractions hit, and she'd dig her top back leg in for leverage to push. That little bugger just didn't want to come out. Finally, a birthing aide wearing a glove that reached her shoulder climbed in and began pulling on those hooves and helped the baby's head out.
My niece proclaimed it "boring," my nephew thought it was "yucky," my middle son was more interested in climbing up and down the bleachers, and my oldest pouted because his juice box was still back in the lunch room. But every other mother in that room and I stared into that mama's big brown eyes and read her pain. With every push, we grimaced and pushed with her and cheered her on. It was my first time in the delivery room where I wasn't the one having the baby, and I still wanted it to be over. And at last, it was. All of a sudden, the rest of the calf slithered out (What's black, white and red all over? A newborn calf, covered in muck!), and mama could finally rest. But about a minute later, the birthing aide made her stand up, and she got to work licking her baby clean. It was a beautiful moment, although somewhat bittersweet, considering what we had already learned at the dairy that day--the calf will be taken away to be fed pasteurized milk and raised elsewhere, while mama will begin her approximately 10 month milking cycle, hooked up to a milking-go-round twice a day until she's six months along with her next baby (cows have a nine-month gestation, just like us).
Anyway, we learned a lot and took home some valuable experiences, all for only $5 per person. And a friend kept the baby for the entire day for me, so I was only a moderately raving lunatic by the time we headed for home! Aah, Monday Funday.
Posted by Jennifer @ 12:22 PM