*Emotional* Unexpected BIG REVEAL that TOOK US by Surprise

what in the world where do I go greetings friends I'm Mike the fit farmer and years ago I moved my family out of the city to Homestead in the country join me as I share our adventures of growing stuff striving to live a healthy lifestyle and so much more oh and we live in a y don't forget to give this video a thumbs up leave a comment below subscribe to my channel turn on notifications and share this video with a friend at first the day started off like a typical day each member of the family has various chores and things that we need to get done each morning and Hezekiah our youngest really enjoys hanging out with me while I do my chores because he just loves being outside are you really to go outside outside outside and my primary chores here on The Farmstead is to take care of our egg laying chickens in the pasture as well as our meat birds and since these areas are a good distance from our house well we generally drive one of the vehicles loaded up with feed and water to ttin to those animals and when I have Kai with me it's easier to have him on my back versus on on my chest while I'm doing the chores so as we ride over there I'm leaning as far forward as I can to drive over to those areas to tend to the animals and generally in the mornings there's not really anything that I need to do with our egg layers I usually have to tend to them later in the day after they laid their eggs but I do have to take care of our meat birds I have to move them on Fresh grass each morning and usually Micah another one of our boys tags along with Kai and me to help us out and when we raise meat birds I generally have multiple tractors full of either chickens or ducks to move [Music] however because of what happened today I wasn't able to do any of that stuff first thing in the morning no instead as we were riding along in the van like normal here is where it changed and it was different as we're driving down the driveway in the van and I glan at our dairy cow like I normally do I had to do a double tap because what I saw in there was not what I was expecting to see what in the [Music] world super exciting may you see that Hezekiah you see it little baby cow yeah yeah cow m what do you guys think cute man I think it's a boy oh man and while we're sitting there enjoying this new baby I'm like oh Josiah go get your mom cuz she was on the other side of the property harvesting Honeysuckle and had no idea what was going on and then when she came over to see it her expression and her response was just Priceless just side just ran and told me that there's a calf oh okay I got to see look at the [Music] baby me that is so cute hey baby hey M it's okay little hairy look oh look at that [Music] baby the baby yeah this is so amazing yeah oh oh it's not that old there's the afterbirth over there on the ground y'all stay back y w startle them I'm so nervous you see that see it little baby C hey M that's my girl and yep your response was just man is just pricing I so enjoyed it I was so excited this was our first calf here on the homestead and I had to get really close I wanted to see you know how close May would let me get and I wanted to know if it was a boy or a girl oh man fresh cuz your hugs are still soft looks like it just happened doesn't it yeah not too long ago there's the after birth right there you're protected there you can tell good girl yep part of the process you didn't even give us a peep or nothing M Dog didn't bark you're such a good Mama you see it you see it baby you're cute a boy or a girl can you tell I don't know can't tell it's hard to tell I have I'm not not close enough yeah and the baby is so cute and adorable and fluffy look at that long fur this baby might be a Highland Jersey cross last fall we got Mama our first family milk cow from our friends Randy and Lindy and they didn't know if she was pregnant or not so they also had a Highland bull that was a part of their herd so there's a good chance and probably definitely happened that our family milk cow Aunt May got some action from a Highland bull definitely looking at the baby that was probably the case at first I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl and Josiah thinks that it's a boy could he be right [Music] yeah I've never seen a cal right after it was born this close before it's actually a little bigger than I thought it was going to be oh man see you checking now what you think back there I think it's a little he oh hear that Tor is that what you guessed yep man exciting give them some time together let them calm down to be honest with you this was a big surprise to me we knew that the possibility of her having a baby was there but it was a big surprise and if she was pregnant we had no idea how far along she was because a cow the pregnancy is nine months is 283 days for most cows and Jersey cows is like 278 so if she was pregnant we like had no idea where she was and for the past several months like she had been showing signs of cycling and her milk production would go down whenever I would see discharge so there were signs that I thought as a newbie were showing that she wasn't pregnant and I kind of thought that she had just been gaining a little bit of weight since we had been feeding her really well I mean really well we've been giving her redm conditioner redm garlic salt fresh grass grass clippings oats sunflower seeds and hey I had been milking May up until the day that she gave birth which is definitely not ideal ideally you want to stop milking 60 days before they give birth so they can build up the colostrum for the baby I came inside and made colostrum according to the directions on the package and I mix that with some of May's milk and of course the kitchen looks like a disaster because our dishwasher broke but that's all just going to have to wait because the most important thing right now is the [Music] calf have my farm closed on [Music] let say the Flies don't get all on me [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay but we had a challenge how would we give this colostrum to the baby because with most animals the mom are pretty protective so to entice mom away I gathered up some of her favorite grass [Music] clippings so I take the grass clippings over to her milk St like I normally do and thankfully she is eager to eat it like normal come on all righty come on come on come on right here okay good girl good girl good [Music] girl hey M as Mike was feeding her I was milking her because I wanted to make sure she did not develop mastitis that's an infection we don't need look at that s the baby's definitely nursed on that side you can tell that she she nurse yeah I can tell because that quarter is so much smaller actually that that whole side good sign like her right back quarter is the biggest it holds the most milk it takes me the longest to milk out of any of them way to go man way to go you did it you did I'm still glad you love your grass here I'm glad we learned about this [Music] like the baby has drained two quarters so she's drained her left side front and back teeth so at least we know that she is nursing which is really good we want to make sure she gets enough colostrum and I need a a couple quarts of milk to mix and if I don't get it here I can I have some from yesterdays I can mix in there and after Lacy finished milking Aunt May with her in the milk stanion now was the time to get the colostrum in the baby yeah oh my God it's okay I'll shake it up [Music] again I know baby's good baby's good baby's good the baby's fine it's okay all right we got to speed this process up I know it's okay hold on it's okay hold on not yet not yet not [Music] yet it's okay calm down calm down it's okay it's okay it's okay he give me that one you were not happy are you you were not happy hang in there hang there there [Music] here here we go here we go here we go come on yeah there we go and then bam somehow Aunt May bust out of the St and mama is not happy and she's running over there towards her baby and I'm like she's coming she's coming he W where do I go and I hear Mike yelling that May's coming sa has been trying to record me giving the bottle to the baby so I let the baby go SA freezes and she goes back and forth and I'm like get away from the baby and May's coming and she didn't know what to do and I was like get over the bleeping BS and I normally do not curse at my children but it was a very intense moment and I really didn't want her to get run over by our milk cow not my finest moment I apologize to her later oh but sa was totally fine everyone was totally fine and it all worked out and may didn't get nearly as close as you actually think she did no no and then we let everyone and everything calm down and then we call up our friend Lindy for some additional counsel and advice give her some molasses and warm water and give the baby colostrum and then I'll probably pick up some calcium too that in a tube just to have it you always have one on hand when you're when you're potentially going to have a c and it was also so neat to hear her excitement for our big surprise for today we love these pil process they're just so solid well congratulations guys yeah all right well uh let us know how it goes I'll be watching for a video all right so we kept an eye on them all day long cuz the baby was born in the morning and throughout the day we did different things Mike expanded their fence area so they have more uh room to move around and I covered up the afterbirth to take care of that cuz of flies this time of year are Relentless and I saw her kind of like hopping around and playing a little bit which always makes you feel good whenever you see them and I saw her use the bathroom so those things are all good signs and it's so amazing to see how an animal his first day of life can stand and walk and even prance around it's just [Music] amazing and I really wanted to give the baby more colostrum cuz she didn't drink that much the first time and I was like oh boy here we go again I'm like all right we're going to do a couple things a little bit different this time first of off sa stay way over there and I'm like we're going to secure her down really really well to this ston making sure that she can't get out from the back and we actually tied her down two times to the ston in the front and with this experience I was like I definitely need a headlock on this stanson as well so it's on the list work in progress right now ASAP and this time went a lot better and she drank more and I actually got to dip the umbilical cord in iodine too something I wanted to do the first time but it's hard to do when a mad cows chasing you this was man let me tell you this this day was a big surprise full of just Adrenaline Rush especially with us being newbies doing these things for the first time your heart's like pumping and to be honest with you I I am not a surprise person I really don't like surprises I like to know what I'm going to get when I'm going to get it and look forward to that but I also realized that life happens and surprises are constantly thrown at you and this was one of those days and oh man still feel like I'm trying to calm down a little bit but it's super exciting at the same time and just another one of the learning lessons that had come along with this experience because there's been a lot for sure another one was I just saw her laying down a lot and I just started getting concerned for her so that next morning I was like I just got to get up and check on her so I went outside to check on her where she at there they are hey hey what are we doing mama and baby just hanging out yeah it's hanging out [Music] I was getting pretty nervous she was just laying down latter party yesterday and I'm like oh no what's going on now but glad to see her up moving around I guess she was just just tired when I saw her hey [Applause] hey going back to Mama I love to see that little youthful pounce there it is again [Music] [Applause] and I woke up in the middle of the night and went out there to go check on them I didn't even know about that but I did get the research and I saw that in the first week of their lives that Cals laid down a lot so that actually did bring me some relief but it does bring me some relief to see her just running around and being happy and she is the cutest little well she's not really little she's actually pretty big but she is just cute and fluffy this was just another one of those amazing experiences that we can add to the list of things that we have experienced here together oh and I almost forgot we need your help last year when we got Mama we decided to name her and ant May primarily based off of the Spider-Man character ant may but we need a name for the baby and we need your help figuring out so if you have any suggestions put them in the comments below we would love to hear them [Music]

Channel: The Fit Farmer - Mike Dickson

Views: 29,270

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Id: 3levTJwyW6k

Length: 21min 54sec (1314 seconds)

Published: Sun May 26 2024