Eleanor Is About to Calve...But I’m Worried!

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]It's uh 5:30 in the morning and um I just feel like she's so close. But um I'm just worried about her handling the calf to be honest with you. I've been worried about I've been thinking about it for a couple of days. We're uh we're going to pull out here and look for her.

[00:00:14]It's going to be hard.

[00:00:19]Eleanor Morning, guys. So, what I've been doing, I know I've been giving you guys updates um just about in every video on our Princess Eleanor.

[00:00:44]Um she's looked like she's going to have a calf at any moment for I don't know, a long time basically. And you guys are probably wondering, Dusty, is is she really going to have a cab? I've been flying the drone at least twice a day from the barn. I've moved the herd since then. They're in a different pasture.

[00:01:03]They're up towards the front of the ponderosa. Got up, started working on video, and I was like, you know what? I need to check on Eleanor. So, I flew the drone up and um now I see some fluid coming out the back side of her. She's close. She's close. So, me and the wiener just hopped in the truck and um we uh we're just pulling out here through the hay meadow and we're going to go check on Eleanor and see what's going on because when the fluid comes out, when you start seeing fluid, um it could be a day, it could be hours, it could be minutes. We just saw Bellar do that. So, we're going to go see what we got going on with her.

[00:01:46]super exciting, but I am worried um about her having a calf successfully.

[00:01:59]All right, so we're in the burn unit, guys. Um this is 80 acres, and this is where she's been hanging out a lot lately. She was just right over here.

[00:02:10]See her bullet?

[00:02:15]She's also been staying in this pond.

[00:02:18]I've been seeing her in this pond a lot lately.

[00:02:22]Oh, there she is. She's up on the hill.

[00:02:32]Morning, girl.

[00:02:38]Hey, what you doing?

[00:02:43]You going to have a calf? Oh, I tell you what, you always start peeing whenever I pull out here. Here, I got something for you. Let's do this real quick.

[00:03:13]There you go. There you go, mama.

[00:03:22]Yep, we've got fluid.

[00:03:26]You know, on this channel, I I try to keep this uh kid-friendly as much as I can. I want to encourage some uh young future bison ranchers out there, of course. Uh, but you know, when it comes to stuff like this, I uh I need to like maybe warn parents, hey, before you show your kid this or grandkid, you know, hey, I don't know if you want to teach them this stuff because they're going to start asking questions and which is a good thing to ask questions. For example, my daughter just got the inquisitive award at school this month.

[00:04:01]Her mom asked a lot of questions, too.

[00:04:03]So, um, it's good thing to ask questions, but in case your kids or grandkids, uh, see some of this and start asking questions, I should just give you a warning before I talk about it or show it. So, I want kids to watch it. I love it when people tell me that their uh, kids or grandkids watch the channel. That's a good thing. I flew the drone a while ago, about 30 minutes ago, and I was in there just drinking coffee, working on video, and I got up and changed and hustled out here. Um, so she does have fluid coming out the backside.

[00:04:35]Um, and that is uh just the pre-birththing stages of this, right?

[00:04:42]And um, like I said before I pulled in this pasture, that could take two days.

[00:04:49]I've seen it on females. It could take hours. It could take minutes. Um, every female is different. Uh when we came out and saw the qual bitty calf here recently, as I was pulling in the pasture, I saw the fluid coming out of Bellar quite a lot. She had her calf in 24 hours. Like literally just a day later because I took the family back out there and Marissa and Kevin and I were going to catch that calf and try to give it some milk replacement. We didn't do that. We felt like it was okay at that point. Then I had a cow. I saw a 1501 cow in the Big Joe Hurt South Dakota female. She had fluid one morning. I saw and like I flew the drone back out there later afternoon and she had already had the calf. So, you know, that was just hours apart and I just missed it. But we're doing our best to try to capture our princess here having a calf. That would be amazing to catch her having a calf. Um, it's very hard to do. We spend a lot of time with ours. We're close to them quite a bit. So, maybe it's something that we can capture. But the herd's not in here, right? She's by herself again, unfortunately.

[00:06:08]Um, Nora went with the herd, and I knew that was going to happen. And it's hard to keep them separated. Um, so I don't know if I can get Nora back out here.

[00:06:18]I'd love to move her at this point. I'm just like, man, I I'd really like her to be closer up to the uh barn. But it is what it is. And um she's been out here for a long time and she she loves it. As long as she has good company from us, she gets some cubes and the herd doesn't bother her. But if I could get Nora out back out here with her, I would. So, what do you think? I know. We want her to have the baby, don't we?

[00:06:52]did want to show y'all one more thing since I was out here. Take a look at this.

[00:06:58]These are wild indigo plants. I love these plants. They're so pretty and they are all over the ponderosa.

[00:07:09]All these little tall plants that you see here are all wild indigo. So, if I came back out here in probably 3 or 4 days, this whole pasture will be covered in yellow indigo, which is what this one is right here. So pretty.

[00:07:29]Well, unfortunately, we got stuff to do and I can't sit here all day, which I would like to, but she also needs her space and um we're going to let her do her thing. And guys, hopefully by the next time we get back on this video, we will have an Eleanor baby.

[00:07:48]And uh just hope it goes well. All right, girl. Stay brown.

[00:07:55]Afternoon. So, we're back. Um yesterday, I came out here. She had about an inch or two of fluid coming out, which I explained all that stuff. Um this morning I was out of town so Marissa came and checked on her and she couldn't get up too close to her. She had bow with her. So anyways, when I got back I flew the drone and I noticed that her string of fluid was much longer. And last time I saw Bellar like this, hers was really like it's a really long uh strand of this pre-birth stuff. Um I don't know exactly what it's called. I'm sure there's a technical term for that gel sort of stuff that um is coming out.

[00:08:42]Um anyways, it's longer now, so I think we're closer. So, I'm coming back to check on her here in the afternoon.

[00:08:51]She's been hanging out down in this pond, too, this dry pond quite a bit.

[00:08:55]So, she may be having a calf down in this pond.

[00:09:28]Hey girl, what you doing?

[00:09:32]Just chilling in the pond.

[00:09:46]No baby yet, huh?

[00:09:50]Hey girl. Just hanging out down here.

[00:09:52]Eleanor.

[00:09:55]Hey Elanor.

[00:10:33]Well, our girl here is definitely in labor.

[00:10:38]Well, in the beginning stages.

[00:10:40]Yep. She's getting close, y'all.

[00:10:44]Did you want some cubes?

[00:10:48]Okay.

[00:10:50]Now, she was kind of like, "You're invading my space."

[00:10:53]So, we're going to let her be. But, she's uh doing all the right things uh to show she's about to have a baby. So, pretty soon, guys. Hold on.

[00:11:07]Hold on. We're almost there. We're going to give her some room. We'll hopefully have a little Elanor calf soon. So, I did pour out some cubes and soon as I left, she came over and started eating them.

[00:11:19]So, I'm glad she found them.

[00:11:22]Little pre-birthing snack.

[00:12:01]Um, so we're back. Um, it's uh 5:30 in the morning and um I just I think uh we came out here last checked um yesterday afternoon. Then I flew the drone yesterday evening to check Eleanor and still that string was hanging pretty low and um I just feel like she's so close but um I'm just worried about her handling the calf to be honest with you.

[00:12:31]I've been worried about it. been thinking about it for a couple of days of she's just an interesting cow and um so we're uh we're going to pull out here and look for her. It's going to be hard.

[00:12:42]There is a full moon, I will say that.

[00:12:44]Um but the clouds keep kind of blowing through where I can't see as well, but I've got a spotlight and we can try to find her. It's going to be difficult.

[00:12:53]There's a couple spots I know where she's been hanging out uh lately and I'm going to target those first. And um this is kind of a slim chance to see it dark.

[00:13:03]Uh but I just want to try to help her as soon as I can. And I I don't know if I will be able to or hope we have a hope we have a red dog. So let's go out here and check real quick.

[00:13:25]We're going to go over here to the drop pond first. That's where she's been spending most of her time.

[00:13:33]Maybe my bright lights will catch her eyes. She's been literally hanging out inside this pond.

[00:13:40]So, that's going to be the first place I'm going to look.

[00:14:05]No eyes.

[00:14:08]I'm briefly scanning these pastures, too.

[00:14:14]See where she's at. Okay. Nothing here.

[00:14:16]I bet she's at the pond where actually there is some drinking water.

[00:14:22]She's right here. I found her.

[00:14:28]She's sleeping.

[00:14:37]Eleanor Don't see anything yet.

[00:15:27]I'll drive around and just check the backside in case.

[00:15:40]All right, girl. I'll be back. See you in a little bit.

[00:15:44]We'll cap you up.

[00:15:46]It's all we wanted. Thank you.

[00:15:50]I'll let you sleep, babe.

[00:15:54]All right, girl. Well, no calf yet. Um, which makes me feel a little bit better.

[00:16:00]She didn't have it at night. Um, I I don't like that. But, um, anyways, um, I feel better, uh, knowing that she hadn't had a calf yet and knowing that she's okay. Um, so we'll, uh, come check her again this morning when the sun comes up. We'll be back.

[00:16:27]Well, as the day continued, we kept a close eye on Elanor, flying the drone and driving out in the pasture. We knew she was close to having a calf, but it wasn't until the next day Eleanor decided it was time.

[00:16:47]Here we are. Finally, we got some action from our princess. Woo! Stay tuned for the next video will be out on Thursday.

[00:16:55]Thank you guys for watching us. We'll see you guys soon. Rank Boston ranchion.