The answer to the question “How good are our cattle yards?” is, “Not that good”.

Today the slightly wild Hereford cow went into labour. I was expecting to see the calf at first light this morning. All the other calves have been there at dawn or shortly afterwards. She’s our biggest cow, and this was at least her second calf, so I was not expecting any problems, but it went badly.

At dawn she was lying down and having contractions, and by 8:00 I could see a foot sticking out, but by 10:00 I phoned someone more expert. He rattled off some instructions and jumped in his car and headed over.

One task was to get her into the cattle yards so we could look at her close up. While it was necessary, I didn’t enjoy it. Razzing a heavily pregnant cow halfway through labour through three paddocks into a small pen was both difficult, and just made us feel bad. She used the bull as a shield, and we ended up having to move the whole lot of them, bull included, then filtering them out at the last minute.

Once in the pen she became even more feral. Without a crush our yards aren’t all that effective, but Gary had a plan to wedge her in the sliding gate. Like a headgate, but with a human doing all the heavy work instead of steel. She stood in the opposite corner, obstinately refusing to go where we wanted, then smashed through the gate. Then she went nuts, and had a serious go at us, charging to fence walls trying to get to us through the fence.

Time to call in the vet.

He was busy on another calving, so couldn’t get there for a few hours, by which time grumpy mum had calmed down a little. Ominously the contractions had stopped.

The vet had a different approach and used a noose and then a head halter to restrain her. The calf, it turned out, was locked in a “k” shape, breach delivery, rear legs hooked up and unable to come through. It required the calf to be pushed back in a bit, unfolded, legs wrapped in a small chain, then winched out.

By then, of course, it was dead. Physically unharmed by the extraction process, but suffocated during the drawn out birth.

While he worked he talked, and the lack of crush and ramp was just one of the flaws he noticed in our yards. The smashed gate needed little commentary, but some of the side-bars needed more welding and could have been made of heavier steel. The railings are a bit far apart for sheep. I know that myself, because the first time I put the sheep in they walked through the fence and were standing outside the pen staring at me by the time I’d finished closing the gate. Only half of the pens have had the steel meshed welded to the rail.

Losing the calf was depressing, and I asked the vet what we could have done better. The answer was "Not much". By the time we knew there was a problem it was too late. We could have called him earlier, but he was busy with other equally complicated calls and couldn't have got there any earlier. We might have done a better job at looking at her in the pen using the vet's noose and head halter, but we would have needed help with turning the calf anyway

Like everyone else, the vet said “Get rid of her”. He’d had personal experience with a feral cow, and was still recovering from being crushed in a pen by an unexpected attack from a docile-to-furious cow.

She’s up and about now, but I’ll be wary of her out in the paddock. I feel like she’ll bear a grudge, and she has never been friendly.