At the farm today I was able to assist with the cattle pregnancy checks where our farms veterinarian will come by with special equipment to check the status of our bred animals. Usually we can start checking our animals for signs of pregnancy around 30 days post service date, however if we are unable to see signs of an embryo implanted in the uterine wall we will consider that cow a "recheck" and put her on a list with other "recheck" cows to be checked again. This is important that we assess the status at least twice to ensure that we did not miss embryo as before 30 days it can be very difficult, if not impossible to tell if the service was successful. We will continue to check the embryo to ensure that it is thriving throughout early gestation. While I helped line up our cows in the headlocks; as this keeps them still so our veterinarian can preform his job; I couldn't help but notice that one of our older cows had an extra teat attached to her udder. In a typical cow their udder will posses four teats, one per udder quadrant, yet this cow here had five total teats! I took a picture and included it below to share the discovery. When I asked out veterinarian about this suspicious teat, he informed me that sometimes cows, goats, sheep and other animals can be born with an additional teat called a supernumerary teat. Some supernumerary teats can be functional and secrete milk when stimulated, while others like the one I found on this cow can be nonfunctional and serve no purpose. How fascinating!
Today we shipped 4,819 gallons of milk.
Today there were two new bull calves born.
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