Funny farming euphemisms when baby is due

I find that so funny. Livestock farmers would like to be considered blasé about these things, and in a world of everything having to produce fairly regularly, getting animals to breed is a daily occurrence, so having a pregnant wife should be expected – sorry, bad pun!

Only weeks after we were married, Peter was being questioned on a regular basis by the members of Lower Speyside Young Farmers, where we were members, as to whether I was "in-calf" if the questioner was a dairy farmer; "in-lamb" if he was a shepherd, or "in-pig" if he was a pig farmer.

And then of course, when I'd been "PD'd" and it was confirmed, out came the calving calendar to speculate as to the date, because cows carry for nine months, so the calculation should be the same.

I got used to it pretty quickly, because as a newcomer, and English, I was a bit of a curiosity, especially as they had spent the year before our wedding trying to marry Peter off to local farmers' daughters with no success!

When their calendars failed and I dragged on for another 10 days, I was offered bumpy rides on farm roads in Land Rovers or tractors, and all sorts of lurid solutions to the problem of getting me to calve. Luckily, I turned all their offers down and produced when I was ready – just like cows do.

However, no matter how many baby animals you see born, or help into the world, you never get over the magic of it, even in the middle of the night when you really wish you were in bed.

When you're beginning to flag at about two in the morning and you are checking the lambing shed hoping that all is quiet, it only takes a grunting, digging, circling ewe to set your adrenaline pumping, and all thoughts of sleep vanish.

Nowadays you can have CCTV in your bedroom to check them without getting up. But somehow I wonder if it's not harder lying there wondering if it's now – or another hour before you need to leave your warm bed, rather than to just go from the kitchen where you've been snuggled up to the Rayburn with yet another coffee having never been to bed.

But I never was a great tech-y person and prefer to watch at first hand. Besides I'd probably fall asleep in front of the TV screen – it usually works for me!

So I wish this mum-to-be a standard, joke-free pregnancy and her husband a straightforward delivery without the need of calving ropes. I'm sure everything will be fine.

* Rosemary Allen is a retired livestock farmer now living near Ellesmere and with her husband Peter is part of CowCash-UK