Anxious wait as the cow goes into labour | Country diary

Allendale, Northumberland I watch a contraction surge across her back, a muscular ripple beneath her shining coat

I've been waiting weeks for the phone call: "There's a cow calving right now and I can see its feet." Grabbing my notebook and extra layers of clothing, I drive up the valley to High Studdon Farm. "We can watch from a loft above the pen", says Nick Howard, indicating the ladder to a hayloft.

Sitting on a bale, I can look down into a barn thick with straw and a group of cows, some with new calves, others about to give birth. There's the sweet medicinal smell of silage, and quiet rustlings mixed with the slurping sound of this morning's calf suckling at a teat.