Dairy Work Experience - Bulling and Calving

Today I learnt about the process of bulling. We can tell when a cow is ready to be bulled if she is mounted by other cows, since she is still and stationary which is evolutionary behaviour to allow the bull to mate with her. Another way we can tell is if the farmer or dairy worker can smell the hormones that are released at this point in the cows reproductive cycle. Another factor to look out for is other cows curling up their lips to smell the hormones that are being released by the cow ready for bulling since other cos can sense when a cow is ready to bull. Therefore, chances are that a cow that is showing this curling of lips behaviour is smelling the hormones of a cow nearby, allowing the search for the particular cow to be narrowed down. The farmer can then double check that the bulling is due by checking the cycle of that particular cow and when it last bulled.
These behavioural characteristics stemmed from days gone by when female cows would signal to the males of the herd that they were ready to mate.
These useful things to look out for give the farmer the maximum chance of getting a cow into calf if it is bulled around the time that these behaviours are noted.

On arrival to the farm this morning I was told that a cow was calving but she needed help as she was delivering backwards. I was able to get the two back legs out allowing the farmer to fit the calving aids, which are effectively little lassos, attached around the legs. A metal bar is looped through these to give a handle on each aid to pull the calf out. The calf came out relatively easily, however, just before the head emerges it is important to support the calf's body to ensure that it does not fall from a significant height if the cow is tall.
I noticed, after ensuring that the calf had taken its first breath (this is done in much the same way as with lambs), that the feet are extremely soft and are almost like silk to touch. This is to ensure that there is no injury to the cow as the calf is being delivered such as tearing the uterus or vaginal opening.
I then applied iodine to the remains of the umbilical cord and the surrounding belly area ensuring that it was fully covered to prevent infection.
Unfortunately the calf was a bull and so is of no real use in the dairy industry. It will be kept with the cow until the following day and will then be shot by staff from the local hunt kennels on the premises who will butcher the young bull and feed it to the hounds. In this way the farm gets rid of unwanted stock and the dogs at the kennel get fresh meat. This is all due to economics and the fact that it is not economically viable to keep bulls when they obviously do not produce milk and cannot go into calf. Occasionally, if both the mother and the father are good pedigrees then the bull could be shown, but this only occurs in rare cases as a bull simply costs too much to rear.