Maggie has popped at last!

Our Jersey cow Maggie was officially due last Friday. Each and every morning, armed with my camera, I carefully checked her before releasing the cows from the corral. And each and every morning ... zip, zilch, nada, nothing.

Yesterday morning, Don and I were getting ready to do a fencing project. I started walking across the yard and, as always, glanced up to gauge Maggie's posture (cows adopt a sort of hunched position when in labor). She looked like she was peacefully grazing ... except she had a long strand hanging from her backside.

I turned and walked back into the house. "Change of plan," I announced. "Let's go get Maggie's calf instead." The little sneak had managed to conceal her early labor when I released her and the other animals from the corral into the pasture, and then had the audacity to have her calf without my being able to watch.

Dragging the gorilla cart, Don, Younger Daughter, and I all trooped up into the pasture to fetch Maggie and her newborn back into the corral.

The calf had just been dropped and was still flat on its side, and very wet with the birth fluids.

Loading the calf was a three-person effort: One person to hold the cart steady in its "dump truck" position, and two people to shove and push the slippery-wet calf into the cart. (By the time we were finished, both Younger Daughter and I were soaked with placental fluids and would require a full-body change of clothes and a shower.)

After the calf was in the cart, I pulled while Don kept the calf from trying to climb to its feet, and Younger Daughter shooed the other animals from following us out the gate. It was a steep downhill drop from the pasture to the driveway, then level-flat as we pushed/pulled the cart around to the back of the barn into the corral. Maggie trotted on our heels, agitated but not aggressive. (Thank God for sweet Jersey cow dispositions!)

Once in the corral, we gently dumped the calf out of the cart to the ground, and let Maggie continue licking her baby dry.

Meanwhile the other animals had come around through the gate to see the new calf. This is Stormy, the calf's older sister, meeting the newcomer.

And the baby is a girl! Back when we had Maggie bred by AI (artificial insemination), the breeder was actually able to select for a heifer for a slight increase in price. She emphasized the gender was not guaranteed, but of all the times she's selected for one or the other gender, she's been successful. We'll have to let her know she succeeded again.

This is our first purebred Jersey calf, so we're pretty jazzed. In years past, all our calves were either purebred Dexter, Jersey/Dexter crosses, or Jersey/Angus crosses.

Maggie is an experienced mama now, so we had no concerns about her maternal care. However we wanted to make sure the calf was nursing as soon as possible to get colostrum.

Meanwhile, she had a long strand of mucous hanging from her backside that was dragging on the ground and tangling around her legs. I took a pair of scissors and snipped off a length.

It took the baby some time to get to her feet. She didn't seem in any hurry.

We left the animals to calm down a bit and let nature take its course. An hour or so later, we checked and saw the calf was standing, though very unsteadily, and blundering around trying to find a teat.

She tried the usual suspects: Maggie's armpit, her sister's leg, the steer's nose, that kind of thing. (It takes a calf a while to figure out where the udder is located ... and on what animal.) The calf didn't quite have her footing, either. At one point, trying to master the three-inch lip on the threshold of the barn door, she went splat.

"What just happened?"

Maggie wasn't much help during this process because she was swishing around in agitation as she labored to pass the placenta.

I went to fill up the feed bins with hay, since the animals were confined to the corral, and by the time I was finished, Maggie had passed the placenta.

Then, in true bovine fashion, she proceeded to (try to) eat it. This is normal behavior for cows, and doubtless is an instinctive technique meant to prevent drawing in predators. Maggie slurped and chewed and chewed and slurped, but wasn't making much progress.

After about fifteen minutes, I grabbed a wheelbarrow and a pitchfork, and scooped up the placenta. Maggie seemed vastly relieved to be excused from this duty.

I decided to run the placenta down to the county dumpsters (located a few miles away) rather than trying to bury it somewhere. I invited Younger Daughter to come with me, and she went to put on some shoes and use the bathroom before departing.

"I'm going to go load the placenta into the car," I called to her through the bathroom door.

"That is SUCH  weird sentence to hear," she shouted back.

Toward evening, Younger Daughter and I went to check on the animals and saw both mother and baby were resting, doubtless exhausted from their ordeal.

I was mildly concerned because I had not yet seen the baby successfully nurse, and I rummaged around in our supplies for a rubber teat in case I needed to milk out some of the colostrum and bottle-feed the baby. The calf was still blundering around investigating armpits and legs without locating the correct spot.

So YD and I collaborated to get her to feed. At a point when she was kinda in the right neighborhood of the udder, YD pushed the calf gently from behind while I guided her mouth toward the teat. Aha! Success!

With a belly full of warm colostrum, within an hour she began doing the cute little skippy-hops of a healthy calf as she tried out her legs.

"Hi Mom! Whatcha doing?"

Later she settled in for the night among her new herd-mates.

So all is right in our little bovine world.

A new home for Lihn

Most readers are familiar with Younger Daughter's Quaker parrot, Lihn. Today, Lihn went to a new home.

This was clearly a difficult decision for all of us, and requires some explanation.

YD got Lihn when she (Younger Daughter) was sixteen years old, an excellent argument why parents shouldn't let teenagers get a long-lived pet. I sorta inherited Lihn when YD left for the Navy, and for the next nine years I was her parrot mom. We got along fine.

However over the last year and a half, Lihn's behavior has been going south. This may or may not have been triggered by my two-week absence in March/April of 2025 when I traveled down to help my dad transition my mom into a nursing home. Whatever the reason, Lihn started feather-plucking.

Anyone who has owned a parrot understands the severity and complexity of feather-plucking behavior. It got increasingly worse. Our local vets (who are in all other respects excellent animal doctors) don't have much experience with parrots, so they urged me to make an appointment with the Washington State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital in Pullman, Washington. Unfortunately the earliest appointment I could get was in November of 2025, so poor Lihn had to endure several months of waiting. During this time I also took an additional trip to see my parents, which may or may not have compounded the issue.

The day of the vet appointment finally arrived, and what I didn't realize was that they planned to keep Lihn overnight for comprehensive testing. This meant a three-hour drive to the vet, a three-hour drive back home without Lihn, then another six-hour round trip the next day to pick her up, and then another six-hour round trip the next week for a follow-up appointment. The conclusion: Undetermined health issues, though they did say she had some arthritis in one foot. (They also determined SHE is actually a HE, but since we've been referring to Lihn as a "she" for the past twelve years, it's not an easy habit to break.)

Lihn was prescribed two types of medication, an anti-inflammatory and a pain reliever. Essentially she will need to be on this medication for the rest of her life. She did a lot better behavior-wise with the pain meds, but she never quite recovered her previously perky personality.

It was about this time (January of this year) that YD began her transition out of the Navy. She was able to land a job on the West Coast, but she is nowhere near in a position to take Lihn with her. For one thing, YD will be at work all day long, which would leave Lihn by herself for the majority of her waking hours. And two, YD's position will require her to be at sea twice a year; once for about a week, and a second time for anywhere from five to six weeks. So Lihn, it seemed, had a permanent home with us.

So YD proposed the idea of rehoming Lihn. At first I was opposed to this, feeling like a failure as a parrot mom and also concerned that wrenching Lihn from the only caregiver she's ever known could backfire, but gradually I saw the wisdom of her logic. Although the initial transition would be difficult, Lihn would conceivably thrive under the care of someone with a natural affinity for parrot psychology and behavior.

With this in mind, YD started her research. There are loads of people willing to take in rehomed parrots, but sadly the majority of them are bird flippers, bird hoarders, or other examples of abusive situations. The thought of putting Lihn in such a cruel placement almost gave me an anxiety attack.

Finally YD connected with two women as possible rehoming candidates. Both had sterling reputations and references. However one woman was having health issues and required some major surgery over the summer, so YD went with the other woman (whose name is Lara), who lives near Boise. Lara has comprehensive experience in rehabilitating birds both physically and psychologically, and felt confident she could nurse Lihn back to her previously healthy and perky self.

For the past week, we've known Lara was coming today (Wednesday), and YD and I have been in something of a funk at the thought of Lihn going away, even though we knew it was in her best interest.

Lara arrived this morning, and immediately YD knew she had made the right choice. Lara was a walking encyclopedia of parrot care. She has a stable home life and is also a stay-at-home mom with children who are respectful of pets. And my goodness, does she know her parrots.

And so, after an hour-and-half visit, we bundled Lihn into her travel cage, then transported her large cage with its stand into Lara's car, along with surplus food, toys, medicine, and other paraphernalia. (I also sent Lara home with about ten pounds of frozen blueberries from last year's crop as a thank-you.)

And then Lara drove away, and Lihn was gone.

Yeah yeah, we know it was the best thing for her, but I'll confess my eyes are stinging as I write this. Lihn's departure leaves both a physical and an emotional hole in our home.

Perhaps it's fitting that there was a single feather on the floor where her cage once stood.

Lara promises to keep us posted on Lihn's progress. If for some reason the rehoming placement doesn't work out, we will take Lihn back ... but Lara sounded extremely confident that wouldn't be necessary.

So yeah, YD did the absolutely right thing in finding someone like Lara to take over the job. But it was still a tough decision.

Younger Daughter is home!

Younger Daughter is home! She hasn't been here in over three years. While I've had the chance to see her more frequently (trip to see my parents, trip to Italy), Don hasn't had the chance, so as you can imagine it's been a happy reunion. Older Daughter is coming in tomorrow as well, so it will be the first time the whole family has been together in a long, long time.

YD is now officially (and honorably) separated from the Navy. She flew stateside on June 8 straight into Southern California to spend a few days with her grandparents, and then flew to Idaho today.

We've spent the last couple weeks turning Older Daughter's room into a guest bedroom. The couch is Older Daughter's, but she couldn't take it with her when she moved out, so we're using it for the moment.

YD will stay with us a few days, then drive to the west coast city where her new job is located. She needs to find an apartment, so that's her primary goal. She has a short list of possible places which she'll look over. Then she'll come back and spend a few more days with us.

Our chick has (temporarily) returned to the nest!

Ready to pop

For the last few days, we've been keeping a sharp eye on Maggie. That's because she's ready to pop.

Seriously, she was bred on Sept. 8, so according to an online gestation calculator, that means her due date is tomorrow (Saturday, June 13). Now of course, as with humans, due dates for cows are merely suggestions, so we don't know precisely when she'll go into labor.

A few days ago, we pulled the animals off the big pasture and released them into the lower pasture, where we could keep closer tabs on them. Last night, when we gave them their evening grain and confined them to the corral (per our usual routine), I checked Maggie before bedtime and noticed, by flashlight, that she was swishing her tail in agitation. That is often a sign of early labor, and so I got up at 4 am this morning (barely light), fully expecting to find a calf on the ground.

No such luck. Today, we released the animals into the very small pasture just around the house where we could watch Maggie closely and scoot her into the corral if need be. Nothing doing. She grazed and chewed her cud all day with nary a care.

But she's huge, and I'm sure just as anxious to have her calf as I am. Stand by for news!

Older Daughter's new digs

Older Daughter has been living in her new digs – a studio apartment in an older building – for over a month now.

A month is enough time to figure out whether you really like a place or not. And I must say, Older Daughter stinkin' loves this studio.

Except for the stairs.

(We actually gifted her with a three-wheeled grocery stair-climbing cart popular in places like New York City to make the trek up those stairs easier when carrying loads.)

But aside from that, she's happy as a clam. There is a lot to see from her massive ten-foot-wide window, and a lot of things to do in the immediate area.

As with any relocation, the first couple weeks were rough. Where to put everything? What to keep, what to donate? How does such-and-such fit into this new space? Arrgghh!

But then, gradually, order came from chaos. And then comfort came from order. Next thing you know, she has a cozy home.

Also, Frumpkin ("The cat who fell upstairs") is also settling in, and has claimed one of Older Daughter's thrifted chairs as his new throne.

I mean ... lord of his domain, am I right?

She says the kitchen is one of the nicest aspects of the studio. It's spacious and has loads of storage. Older Daughter has become something of a gourmet cook, so having adequate space to prepare nice meals is a bonus.

Here she made a lemon-blueberry loaf.

She has a desk for her computer. This will become especially needed when her coursework starts.

And that window simply dominates the space. It's stunning.

Here's what it looks like from the outside.

So yes, her new digs are wonderful. She's so pleased that she actually baked some cookies and brought them to the property management's office to express her satisfaction. If all goes well, she'll be living here for the duration of her schooling ... and maybe even beyond, if she ends up getting a local job after graduation.

So for now, she's settled in.