The Suttles Dairy
Maternity Pen Cam
85 Holsteins in central Minnesota · Donald, Sue and James Suttles

LIVE from the maternity pen. A new picture every 3 minutes, day and night.
This page reloads by itself every 3 minutes.

Welcome to the barn
I'm Sue Suttles. My husband Donald and I milk 85 Holsteins on his family's farm in central Minnesota. His grandfather started the place, and his dad, Luther, still runs the haybine and the baler for us every summer and will tell you how he did it in 1958 whether you ask or not. Our son James is 16 and does chores morning and night. Donald does the cows and the fields. I keep the books and raise the calves, so the maternity pen is more or less my department, and so is this page.

Why a camera in the barn?
When a cow is close to calving, somebody has to check on her, a lot, and cows like to calve in the middle of the night. For years that meant one of us pulling on boots and a coat at 2 a.m., walking out to the barn, and finding her standing there chewing her cud looking at us like we were crazy. Then going back at 4.

So last March Donald put a little video camera high up on the wall in the corner of the maternity pen and ran the cable to the computer in the farm office, which is right off our kitchen. Now we can check a cow from the kitchen table in our slippers. We leave one low light on over the gate at night so the camera can see. In June, James figured out how to send the pictures to this page every three minutes, so the family can watch too, and so can a very special fourth grade class (see below).

Yes, it has already paid for itself in sleep.

>> Our best frames: the night Freckles was born <<

WHO'S DUE THIS FALL

A cow carries her calf a little over nine months, about 280 days, and "due" is a guess. Heifers like to be early and old girls like to be late. Each cow comes into the maternity pen a day or two before she's due, or sooner if she looks ready.

HOW I CAN TELL SHE'S CLOSE

• Her udder fills up and gets tight and shiny. Some cows "bag up" weeks ahead, some the last day.
• The ligaments go soft. On either side of the tailhead there are two ligaments you can feel like cords. A day or so before calving they go so soft you can hardly find them, and the area looks sunken.
• She's restless. Up, down, up, down. She walks the pen, looks at her sides, kicks at her belly.
• She goes off her feed and leaves hay in the manger.
• She holds her tail out a little, away from her body. When I see that tail, I put the coffee on.

THE FIRST FEW HOURS

1. Most cows calve just fine on their own, and we leave them alone. If she's been pushing a long time and nothing's happening, or I see the calf coming wrong, we go out and help, and if it's bad we call the vet.
2. The cow licks the calf all over. That dries it and gets it breathing and moving.
3. The calf should be up on its feet within about an hour. They're all legs and they fall down a lot.
4. Colostrum. That's the first thick yellow milk, full of the antibodies the calf needs, because a calf is born with almost no protection of its own. It has to get colostrum in the first few hours, while its gut can still take them in. I give two quarts in a bottle as soon as the calf will suck, and two more before twelve hours are up.
5. I dip the navel in iodine so germs can't get in, and put in her ear tag.
6. A day or so later the calf goes out to its own white calf hutch in the yard, with a bucket of milk twice a day, and starts on calf starter and water. That's where I come in for the next two months.

"WHY DO THE COWS HAVE TO HAVE A CALF EVERY YEAR?"
The fourth graders asked that, and it's a good question. A cow only makes milk after she has a calf. That's what the milk is for. After she calves, we milk her for about ten months. About two or three months after calving she's bred again, and for the last two months before the next calf she gets a vacation: we stop milking her and she's "dry," to rest up. Then she calves again and starts over. So a calf a year keeps her milking.

The heifer calves we raise to join the milking herd when they're about two. The bull calves we sell at about a week old to a neighbor who raises them for beef. We don't keep a bull on the place. It's safer, believe me.

THIS YEAR'S TALLY
January 1 through today, Sunday, September 26, 1999:

That's 61 calves from 60 cows because Dot had twins in April, a heifer and a bull. When a heifer is born twin to a bull, she almost always can't have calves of her own when she grows up. She's called a freemartin. So Dot's little heifer will be raised for beef too, which is a shame, because she's the friendliest calf in the row.

HELLO TO MRS. MAGEE'S FOURTH GRADE!
Mrs. Sheila Magee had James in fourth grade, back before he was taller than me. This year her class checks the Pen Cam every morning first thing, and they have a deal with us: they get to name every heifer calf born this fall. So far they've named Freckles. Clover's calf is next, if it's a heifer, and they have a list of names on the board already. In October the whole class is coming out on the bus to see the hutches and bottle-feed. Wear boots, kids. You'll find out why.

ABOUT THE PICTURE

• The camera is up in the back corner of the pen, so you're looking down at the gate.
• If the pen is empty, nobody's due. Check back.
• At night it's dark and grainy. That's the little light over the gate. We don't want to keep the cows up.
• If you see a person in the pen, that's me (or Donald, or James). We'll wave.
• If the picture doesn't change for a while, the computer locked up. James fixes it when he gets home from school.