An eventful day

This morning we were milking Opal and everything was going well, when, towards the end, Jasmine came into the milking area and started mounting Olive. Olive was nursing at the time, Opal was in the stanchion, and Ed and I were milking Opal per our usual routine. When Jasmine mounted Olive, she knocked her right over, and knocked Ed over on his butt, and the milk bucket went flying. This upset Opal who was in the stanchion, unable to move around much, and it was quite a commotion. Fortunately we did not lose much milk, since most of what we had by that time was in a different bucket, out of harm's way. Jasmine tried mounting Olive again until I got bossy and kept her out of the milking area.

Although this was kind of disruptive to our milking, we were happy to see some sign of heat. We've been waiting for weeks to see something, and this seemed like an unmistakable sign. From what was going on, we figured that Opal is in heat. We told Sena to stand out there after we were done milking to watch the cows and take notes on what was happening. Being new at this sort of thing, we needed all the info we could get. Heat detection is not always easy, and the window for inseminating is quite tight, so we wanted to make sure that what we were seeing was really heat.

In the meantime, I called the Artificial Insemination (AI) guy to tell him to get ready to come. After that, I got in the car and drove a couple of hours to Massachusetts, to get a tank with Mr. Right's sperm in it, from one of our friends who has the bull we want. Got that, and turned around and headed right back home with this tank of most interesting contents strapped in the passenger seat besides me.

We kept watching the cows on and off throughout the day for more mounting or other signs of heat, but nothing significant happened since this morning. This evening I decided that maybe Jasmine is in heat, not Opal, because she's acting weird and high strung whereas Opal is her normal self. In any case, the AI guy is coming tomorrow morning, and hopefully he'll be able to shed some light on all this. Hopefully we'll get at lest one of them pregnant.

While Sena was out there this morning with her clipboard, watching the cows and recording their activities, here's what she wrote:

Jasmine butted calf.
Jasmine mounted Opal.
Jasmine licked Opal's butt.
Opal licked Jasmine's butt.
Jasmine butted Olive.
Opal almost butted Jasmine.
Opal pawed the ground while pooping.
Jasmine mounted both at the same time.
Head fight Opal and Jasmine.
Opal pushed passed calf.
Calf smelled Jasmine's pipi (private area).
Jasmine butted calf.
Jasmine pawed the ground.
Opal butted Jasmine.
Opal did some repeated butts.
Jasmine mounted opal.
Opal ran and butted.

All of this in less than half hour.