Bessie on Christmas

Of all days..... The vet wanted to be called if Bessie (who WAS artificially inseminated/bred 5 weeks ago) seemed to go into heat (meaning that she is most likely not pregnant but needs to be bred again). I noticed the symptoms on the 4th (2 weeks after the breeding), and again on, of all days, Christmas Day.  That's a perfect cycle for a dairy cow--21 days between times when they can become pregnant.   Not perfect:  the timing of the cycle on a major holiday! I was NOT going to call the vet to come out and "sleeve" our cow on Christmas Day.  I let him know what the situation was by way of e-mail, making it clear that it wasn't urgent and that we would wait until January. Bessie's fertility history, since she's been here:   She gave birth in July.  A normal dairy cow is re-bred within 3 months of giving birth.   We didn't try to have her bred until late November (almost 6 months later).  She didn't seem to be coming into "heat" during that entire time, even though the heifer Lucy was in obvious cycles and became pregnant on the first artificial insemination attempt.   When the vet came to give the calf and Bessie their shots (Bessie had never been vaccinated at the organic dairy), he checked for how close to "heat" she was and announced "Well, this is why she isn't cycling!  She has a cyst on her ovary!".  And we proceeded to do a round of shots (2 of them administered by me) to eliminate the cyst and bring her into heat for an attempt at breeding.   That was over 5 weeks ago.   So, potentially a heat cycle 3 weeks and a few days back, another cycle culminating on Christmas, and now we wait until January 15..... The vet's comment when he called me to chat about the e-mail?  "Well, we're finding out more and more why you got this cow for such a bargain price".  Precisely the sentiment of our friend Myles when we announced the whole cyst scenario at the beginning of November! Let's see:  The farmer told me that she had a history of mastitis, and was upfront about the fact that her mastitis (infection of the udder) quite often meant that her milk would not be used for sale, but would be fed to the calves instead. When I was talking to Farmer Bob later about the Dutch Belted "breeding up" program, he did tell me that she wasn't one of his "best" cows He told me that she had given birth to her 2010 calf in the heat of summer and wasn't ever able to bring up her milk production to make her "profitable" So....I knew she was no gem of a dairy cow, and now she's proving to be a bit difficult to potentially get pregnant. One good thing:  She was a cow with a history of mastitis, probably made worse by being on a milking-machine schedule and not a continuous-nursing schedule, and made even worse by coming to our farm where I didn't know how to hand-milk her (and where she didn't want to cooperate for several days!).  Having a calf drinking on-demand from this particular cow for 7 months has resulted in NO flare-up of the mastitis.   I wonder if we'll discover something redeeming about her in regards to getting pregnant, too? If nothing else, she's been a good learning experience for all of us, if only because it's been a total crash-course in how to handle a cow and what to expect..... Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/