It's a girl! calves and breeding cows

 After several more bull calves - here they are in this hutch, I am not sure why they are all in one as Garry built the second three calf hutch last week to prevent this, since the point of hutches is to keep calves from spreading diseases by mouth contact, yesterday afternoon Garry pulled a heifer calf out of the heifer the ladies were ready to stay up all night with on Friday night, they were worried that she was close to having her baby and didn't want problems. He was happy to see a female. it seems every cow he breeds for other people have heifer claves, but not so much here.


It seems like every time Garry got home last week, there was someone here wanting him to breed a cow. The week before, no cows to breed, then he thinks no one wants him to breed their cows. On Monday when we got back from Dnepropetroesk and picking up Sweta (the new student- see trade school blog for her story) he was looking for someone coming to breed a cow when we got home. He had gotten a phone call from Maxim, who was away for a couple days this week to help out his familywith cutting wood to heat their house. Everyone in the village calls Maxim when they want to talk to Garry. Sometimes they just show up at the house for breeding cows, though. Even I know what "Inseminate carvova" means in Russian.

Garry was also expecting a visit from John Wiens, on his way back from the airport with some Canadian guests (we went with them to the basketball game Friday evening) so he was looking to get this cow bred when we got back. A lady showed up and he asked if she wanted a cow bred, figuring she was the one Max had called about. Then she asked how he bred the cow, which is a little too difficult for him to explain in Russian, so he phoned Maxim and had her speak to him. It turned out she wasn't the person Max had called about, he showed up shortly after, so Garry went and bred that guy's cow in the closest village,  (the name means something like frost) before we had our company in, and then drove off as the cows were coming home from the field down the street around four pm to find this ladies house- hopefully before dark-  and breed her cow in the village where Vitaly's farm, the big dairy farm is, Molazahorrina. It is the first cow he has bred in that village, which will lead to more trips there I am sure.


Tuesday, when he spends most of the day teaching at the trade school, he had a cow to breed again, often the person wanting a cow bred shows up here in a car and takes Garry, the semen tank, and his other smaller pieces with him, he has to take the breeding rod, assorted plastc pieces, including a long glove, and a thermos cup of hot water for thawing the semen at the coreect temperature, because it may not be available at the house where he is breeding cows. Then they drive him back, if the person wanting a cow bred doesn't have a car, then they phone and talk to Max, or hire a neighbor to come get Garry. When he started breeding cows in Pervy Mai, over a year ago, often the same man would show up in a Samara (made by Lada, a hatchback with a more powerful engine, they are very popular in the villages) he discovered Garry would sing along to one of the songs on his CD player, so he would make sure that song was on while driving. Many of the "older people" love American music of the 70's, since rock musican was not a career choice in the CCCP, they listened to our music.

Then just as we were getting in the car to drive to Dnepropetroesk Tuesday evening, for our English Bible study (Garry is leading it, we are reading CS Lewis' book Mere Christianity)a man showed up with a friend who had a cow in heat from the village of Petropol (Peter's field which is on the way to Zaporosia) Since he really didn't have time to go with them right then,  Garry asked when the cow came in heat, and told them she would be good to breed in the morning, and made plans with the guy (whose cow he had bred a few days ago) to pick him up at 6 am to breed the cow.We got home at ten pm (no flat tire this week, thankfully) and Garry had to go check on the milk tank for the ladies, which they were having problems turning on, luckily nothing was broke, he got it on a went to bed.

The guy drove in prompty at 6 am and Garry went out. When he returned he said it was all for naught, as he was trying to put the breeding rod through the cervix, he realized she felt like a pregnant cow and stopped. So he could have stayed in bed longer, as he was going to his last teacher certificate class in Zaporosia, and had to leave at 8 am to pick up other teachers (since English is not a required course for the program, I didn't have to go).
 It turned the cow had been bred 5 months ago (and pregnant) by a vet who breeds them the traditional Soviet style AI. Unlike the way Garry was taught, where you put a gloved hand in the cows anus to guide the metal rod through the cervix of the cow and push out the contents of a thin straw of thawed semen, this method uses blobs or pellets of semem, also frozen and kept in a liquid nitrogen tank. These blobs are placed right in the the vagina of a cow in heat, and then the cow is encouraged not to push it out for a half hour or so- often when Garry breeds a cow the owner will want to keep her from lying down or pinch her back to keep her tail up. Garry would never make it breeding cows this way, it is for people with small hands!