Now we're left with 2...

Barn kittens, about 2 weeks ago.  They are just about 5 months old.

All 3 were hanging out together up in a tree, because they were tagging Taffy in the pasture and dashing away.  

She was so pleased that she had cornered them, and then realized that she could no longer reach them.  

They were quite pleased to have outwitted their doggy friend, and then got tired of being up there but couldn't come down because she was waiting...  

After last week's unfortunate incident involving Rocky, we're left with the top two, who are still as spunky and loving as ever. 

Laura

"Let me be singing when the evening comes"

Maybe there's a new potential name for the farm:  "Evening Song Farm".  

There's a story behind it, and a great, thought-provoking song to go along with the theme.  

It has a God-honoring meaning that makes me smile.  

It isn't something I'll feel silly explaining time and again (like "Fainting Farmer Farm" would need to be explained!)

It would need to be approved by other family members, so at this point....let me just talk about why that name came to mind, in the middle of church this morning, as I sang these lyrics with tears in my eyes:  

"Whatever may pass, and whatever lies before me, Let me be singing when the evening comes". 

Some events last week laid me pretty low.  

Sly  (our 12 year old house cat) was unexpectedly sick and then put to sleep.  He had a mass in his stomach that we didn't even know about.  I didn't choose to wait when the vet told me what the trouble was.  I stayed with him, and it was mere seconds before our black kitty was no longer with me.

We buried him, and I wondered, like I do every time we lose a pet, why it hits me so hard.  I dragged through the day, squelching tears sometimes and sobbing at others.  Typing about him brings those tears to the corners of my eyes again....almost a week later

Then, two days after we buried Sly, I was giving Rocky the husky a real treat...some freedom to run with Taffy and Shadow while I worked in a fenced area.  The barn kittens love attention, and they love Taffy.  One slipped into the fenced area where the dogs and I were, and all I heard was a strangled yowl, and I knew that we would be burying another cat.  Rocky had gotten to him before he even knew what was happening.  I kicked Rocky off of the kitten and scooped him up off of the ground, getting scratched and bitten in the process.  There was no hope.  

It was the most trusting of the kittens, the one that came to us first, the favorite that would just lie in our laps or would stroke Taffy's chin with his tail.

I put him gently in the silo, where he was born, where he would gasp for his last breath.  

To make things worse, I had to consider that I might need to end his suffering.  God was kind, in allowing the little kitty to breathe his last while I was calling Jeff to tell him what had happened.

Jeremy and I buried the unnamed little barn kitty next to Sly, under the weeping willow tree that Michael planted 4 years ago with just a branch stuck in the ground and watered to within an inch of it's life.  Their little cat collars hang on the branches of that small tree.

These things rock me to the core.  

Life is what this farm is about, in so many ways.  When we had the farm sitter here in August, I had to tell her....  "In a place with so much life, you need to be ready if something dies.  It will be OK."  And sure enough, a mama duck hatched out a nestful of babies, walked away, and only 3 survived.  The farmsitter saw death in the middle of life.

I don't stop to think that I should take my own words to heart.

I am all about LIFE....  I watch for caterpillars, and take joy in a chick pecking its way out of an egg.  I save woolly-bear caterpillars from being stepped on by the livestock, by moving them out of the traffic zone.  I enjoy seeing the little bat flitting over the pasture at night, and was thrilled to see that he was joined by 3 others this summer.  I watch the wren house and listen to their song, waiting for when the fledglings take flight....and those baby wrens don't fly, but hop along the ground where they are in range of the barn cats...which I stress about.  I rescue cedar waxwing fledglings from cats, and put them back on a high branch where they might be safe.  I wring my hands at the thought of baby animals being injured or of not being ready to help when they are born.  I apologize to baby bunnies born to an unexperienced mother who didn't make a nest, and all 7 or 10 babies are dead by the time I find them on the floor of their cage.  

I love the LIFE part of this farm.

Seeing the kittens day by day, exploring and becoming brave and playful was something to look forward to.  Seeing Jeremy spend time with each and every one of them, and the kindness and compassion he has showed as he made them tame and friendly, that just warmed my heart.   Seeing the kittens dashing up to Taffy in the pasture to taunt her and dash away through the fence made me smile while I trudged through chores or shoveled piles...and more piles.  Watching the kittens venture next to the cow when I milked her brought joy to my morning, even as it caused Bessie to flinch and put the day's supply of milk in jeopardy.  

The kittens have a free, wonderful joyfulness that makes you smile, even if they are snarling and wrestling in the middle of the barn floor.  

A pure joyfulness that is cut short by the crushing jaws of another animal who you love is a hard thing to reconcile in your mind.  And yet, Rocky was just being the dog that he can't help being.  

(I made some contacts, asking about re-homing him.  Ultimately, we will file those ideas away, knowing that there will be a next time, and probably a time after that, until we follow through on finding a home where he will not be around small animals.  For now, to answer the question that you are bound to be wondering, he will not leave the farm....)

So, there were many tears this week.  

But, as someone reminded me this morning at church, these are God's creatures, and they are put in my care for whatever reason that is beyond my comprehension.  We cared for them for the time that they were here, and grieved that their lives ended.  I guess that is the best we could do.

I didn't feel that I had failed, but only that life was snuffed out and cut short sooner than I would have chosen.  But these animals were in God's hands all along.  

As we sang in church this morning, tears came to my eyes during many of the songs.  Then this one came along.  I've cried heartily to this one many times before.  The words we were singing had me scrambling to find a pen and scribbling these lyrics on the bulletin so that I wouldn't forget:

"Whatever may pass, and whatever lies before me, Let me be singing when the evening comes".  

Cats dying....I could still be singing at the end of the day.  

The past accidents that Bessie got herself into.  I could still be singing.  

"For all Your goodness I can keep on singing, 10,000 reasons for my heart to find"

If all of our animals have stillborn babies in the course of the next spring, I could still sing at the end of the day....

If the farm venture ultimately ends rather than continuing for years and years, there are 10,000 reasons that I could still sing, even if it's through those tears of sadness.

"Sing like never before, Oh my soul"

Whatever may happen in the course of LIFE on the farm, there will be death.  It's just the reality that I don't care to think about....ever!  

I am so woefully unprepared when an animal leaves my ideal image of farm life before "my" plan says it is time...  

I can still sing at the end of the day, even if it is through tears.  

("Evening Song Farm" has a nice ring to it, don't you think?)

And since it's the beginning of a new week, the words of the first two lines of the song couldn't be better.

"The sun comes up, it's a new day dawning.  It's time to sing Your song again". 

These are the lyrics to Matt Redman's song, "10,000 Reasons", with a link to the praise-version at the end.  

The sun comes up, it's a new day dawning
It's time to sing Your song again
Whatever may pass, and whatever lies before me
Let me be singing when the evening comes

Bless the Lord, O my soul
O my soul
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before
O my soul
I'll worship Your holy name

You're rich in love, and You're slow to anger
Your name is great, and Your heart is kind
For all Your goodness I will keep on singing
Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find

Bless the Lord, O my soul
O my soul
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before
O my soul
I'll worship Your holy name

And on that day when my strength is failing
The end draws near and my time has come
Still my soul will sing Your praise unending
Ten thousand years and then forevermore

Bless the Lord, O my soul
O my soul
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before
O my soul
I'll worship Your holy name

Matt Redman, 10,000 Reasons (2011)

10,000 Reasons (Lyrics) - Matt Redman

				10,000 Reasons (Lyrics) - Matt Redman
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Laura

An unexpected goodbye

You'll probably get two stories/posts in one mailing.  

The first one is what I typed about an hour ago.  

This one is an official goodbye to our obnoxiously friendly, 12 year old black housecat, Sly. 

 

He wasn't himself last night, after falling asleep on top of a lap-top computer, then being moved to the floor, then not wanting to eat....  

He was as limp as a rag doll as we set him up in a bed of towels and t-shirts to spend the night upstairs.  

We said goodbyes last night, thinking he would not make it until this morning....and he made it through to this morning anyway, seeming to perk up just a bit.  

But at the vet's office, they found a large mass in his abdomen.  The choices were....x-rays, exploratory surgery, or.... choice #3:  an injection.

He used to weigh a whopping 16 pounds, and we would laugh when his belly dragged in the snow and left a line between his paw prints. 

When he jogged through the grass, his belly would sway from side to side....

He used to lie down and his belly would melt into a puddle of cat....taking up your whole lap and then some.

He used to put his weight tentatively on your shoulder (if you didn't let him get onto your lap) and melt himself down your chest to settle on your lap anyway.

He used to sneak into your bed and curl up against your stomach or on your back and make it impossible to move if you got uncomfortable.

He used to come running for food, and it was the only way to lure him back into the house at night.

This morning, he weighed 12 pounds.  He hadn't been eating a lot, but....was still spry enough to quickly catch and devour a mouse that ran down the stairs last week.  

Just this week, he came running for a can of tuna, and competed admirably with 3 dogs who also know the sound of a can opener...

He was in his terrible shedding stage, which happens every year.  Clumps of fur making him look ragged and scraggly, which he couldn't groom out.

Our usual spunky cat didn't try to escape in the vet's office as I held him rather than keeping him in the cat carrier.  He perked his ears when the vet came in, but didn't try to be friendly with her.  

He wasn't his old self, and it didn't take too much thinking about agreeing to option #3.  

We'll bury him tonight, under the red-bud tree where barn cats and Midnight and a few favorite bunnies have been buried in the past 4 years.

Sigh...  I can't imagine NOT having animals in our life, but this part sure makes you stop to think....

 

Laura

Our Sly old cat

When a pet has been with you for 12 years, you don't realize how much a part of your family they have been, what milestones their presence has witnessed, what life-changes they have been there with you for.

Sly the black cat might still pull through.  He's overcome some pretty steep health obstacles in his 12 years (blood-poisoning-quality wound from a cat fight, urinary tract obstruction....)

He came into our family when Jeremy was just one year old.  He was here when Chris moved off to college, and when Carrie moved out to be an independent young lady.  Sly was with us when we made the move to the farm, and has seen Jeremy start at a new school and Michael finish high school and go off to college.  

Not that he knows what he's witnessed, but it's a mental tally on my part of the family events since he joined our little zoo....

Last night, he was sleeping on a chair on top of Jeremy's computer.  He never chooses hard surfaces to rest on, but instead tries to force his way (or stealthily creep down from your shoulder) to settle in on your lap.  His best resting position is when he can drape himself across not only MY lap but also worm his way halfway across Jeff's lap.  Much to Jeff's annoyance!

So he was on the laptop, and we moved him off.  The dogs were playing and making a commotion, so no-one really took notice when Sly just curled up on the floor a few steps away from the chair and comfy-laptop.

When we were done in the living room, we noticed Sly lying rather limply in that spot.  He didn't want to move, and did his best rag-doll impression.  Finally, when the dogs nosed him, he roused himself and slunk behind the couch.  

When it was time to feed the indoor cats and the barn cats (they wait outside on the front step for a few morsels of house-cat food), Sly didn't come running for his portion.  Sly never misses a meal.  But I realized that he'd been leaving half a bowl of food for a week or so, and had been rather eagerly eating the dog food that I put out for Taffy every morning.  (Imagine bossy little Taffy waiting in confusion as a cat hunches over her bowl and crunches HER kibbles!)

If Sly wasn't coming for food, something really WAS wrong.  Time to pop the lid on the one remaining can of cat food.  That's when all cats and dogs come running.  The dogs perked up right away.  

No response from Sly.  He didn't even raise his head when we prodded the can all the way under the couch to end up right under his nose.

Jeremy and I set up a convalescent bed for him in the upstairs bathtub....old towels, old T-shirts, food, water.  Sly made a few sickly yowls as we moved him, but otherwise he settled into the make-shift cat bed and looked like he wouldn't last the night.  I noticed how thin he was.  

This time of year, he always looks sickly.  He loses his fur in mats, and it makes him look like a ragamuffin.  Under all of those mats, he was really, terribly thin.

But...just last week, a mouse ran down the stairs and Sly was on it and crunching it up before the dogs even knew it was there.  Just this past weekend, Sly was being a nuisance and trying to settle onto my Mom's lap, complete with the razor-sharp claws that open and close as he settles in (poking into skin, always)...  He came in last night for food, but didn't eat much.  But he was part of the normal routine.  He was sitting on the driveway as I drove off to run errands yesterday afternoon.  What could have laid him low in this short amount of time?!!!

So, Jeremy and I talked through whether to call the vet.  It wasn't an emergency.  Sly didn't seem to be in pain.  He was resting comfortably.  We decided (through tears) that taking him to an emergency clinic where they would poke him to draw blood and prod him to examine him would not be best.

Jeremy headed to bed, and I sat by the side of the tub, stroking Sly's head and watching for the towel to move with his breathing.  Muffled sniffles could be heard from the bedroom, and my sobbing increased as I realized that this was probably goodbye.  I thought about setting up a bed on the couch, so that Sly could sleep curled up against my stomach (his favorite place to spend the night), but....he was comfortable and I didn't know how long he had left.

Crying over a loved pet always brings back the memories of the OTHER loved pets that we've said goodbye to....the guinea pig that died after we returned from vacation because our neighbor didn't put the water bottle back in, Midnight the cat who died after 16 years with us (the cat who loved Chris and was not fond of the rest of us), Clarabel the border-collie lab mix who was my first good dog....

Sly was a wild kitten who we took in as a favor for a friend.  Her husband wouldn't let her keep him.  We were supposed to be a foster situation.  

He was caught behind someone's office, where good-hearted people were feeding the wild cats, and the wild cats were multiplying and tearing open cat food bags and becoming a general nuisance.  

He was a truly wild cat, crazy, leaping over our old dog, tearing around on the wood floors in our old house and skidding as he turned to dash back across the floor.  Carrie tamed him and that's how he learned just how beautiful it is to sleep curled up right next to someone's warm stomach.  (He also attempted to sleep with his large furry body draped across Carrie's face, which didn't go quite as well for him).  

Sly was the cat that I worried about, when he would choose not to come in at night.  A busy street, coyotes, feral cats....he was bold enough to take on all of those.  And that was in suburbia.  

I STILL worry about him, and he STILL chooses not to come in at night.  Same dangers here, although he likes to hang out with the barn cats, so there may be protection in numbers.

Jeremy came into my bedroom this morning to say that Sly was sitting up in the bathtub and was trying to eat.  I was amazed.  Sly's body was cool last night, his breathing was shallow, he hardly noticed when I stroked his nose and head.  Last night he hardly opened his eyes except when my crying roused his curiosity, and that was just one eye opened, one ear twitching, and back to sleep. 

 

I went up to check on him this morning, and he got up and ate some more canned food while I sat by the tub.

The vet office is open in an hour.  For our 12 year old cat, I hope it will be good news and something not too difficult to treat.  

Last night I was telling myself and Jeremy that Sly has had a really good life with us.  I'll need to remind myself of that as the tension builds....  

Not sure what the vet will say, but I think it will be my job to request that we not take any heroic measures to keep him here, if his time has come.  

I'd better get my barnful of other critters fed and watered, so that I can head to the vet with Sly when it's time.

 

Laura

Once again, a Bessie story

I looked out as the black rain-cloud started dumping torrential rain on the farm, and saw Bessie, with her head and front shoulders in the big hollowed-out part of the ancient willow tree.  

She was probably munching hay (I feed the goats in there, it makes a nice shelter for them and keeps the hay dry), and she must have decided to keep her front half dry while the rain blew in.

I chuckled and thought "What a clever girl".  

And then....a huge flash of lightning and deafening clap of thunder had me jumping and running to the window to check on her.  She was still standing, to my great relief, and my heart took a break from beating quite so wildly.

The willow is still the tallest tree on the property, despite dying off by degrees since before we moved here.  Maybe the lightning rods on the top of the barn are equal or just a bit taller.  But not by much.

I went from thinking how clever she was to thinking "Of all the stupid spots to take shelter!!!", in a split second.

She and her 5 month old calf are just fine and are eagerly munching up the green leaves that the storm blew off of the trees.  

But I no longer think of the willow as a great place to shelter during a storm, that's for sure!!!

We're in between waves of this storm, so I'd better head out and call her in, before she decides her own fate by getting struck by lightning.... 

Does she have a death-wish lately?  Ugh!  

An ostrich with her head in the sand, thinking she's taken refuge someplace safe.  Silly cow...  :(

 

Laura

The Bessie Fan Club

Photo:  Bessie and last year's calf, Caspian.  

To the Bessie Fan Club, (you know who you are!)  :)

Thank you so much for your affection for my obstinate old girl Bessie, and for the kind words and support you've shown me.  

(No worries, this in not a notice that anything ELSE has happened!  Thanks goodness!)

I tend to type out my raw emotions, and I imagine that it might bring a tear to your eye to read some of my shared heartbreak.  

Writing has somehow always helped me to organize my thoughts and to deal with things that might otherwise feel overwhelming.  

I don't always stop to think that (with the farm blog) I'm dragging other people along for the ride (although you're coming along willingly, if I stop to think about it!)

I hope it also brings a smile to your face as you read that Bessie still has a future here.   

There's no telling how long that will be, but....the end is not predicted to be anytime soon.

Bessie, of course, knows nothing about her little fan club, and might even gaze at you with disinterest unless you were standing by the fence with a carrot or apple in your hand....  Then her eyes would light up and her ears would swivel forward.  The disinterest only returns when the treat is gone.  

Typical ungrateful cow behavior.  "Meh" as Chris likes to say, with a shrug of his shoulders....

But, on Bessie's behalf, as her good-will ambassador, I share this....  

To all of you who love her, Bessie says "MOOO!"  :)

 

Laura

Bessie update

Well....  I was crying over swollen knees and imagined worst-case scenarios, thank-goodness it seems that the worst was just that....imagining!  

The vet came out to check on Bessie, got a good look at the back of her injured knees, said she would most likely have stiffness in her front legs for the rest of her life, but....it wasn't as bad as it seemed last night.

As he sprayed some vet-quality fly spray on her worst leg, his comment made me smile after I understood what he meant.  

"Well, at least we don't see any 'divers'."  

Huh?  Meaning....no  disgusting white, wriggling maggots were frantically making a leap for freedom as the spray set into the wound.  A good sign.

I am so relieved, and also feel completely drained.  

The Bessie situations of the last month got me thinking, which is good....  We are managing a small property with a large number of animals on it.  We are fortunate to still have green grass in the pasture (and not a mud pit), hay in the hay loft of the barn, and resources to purchase the necessary feed for so many hungry mouths.  

Grazing a few blades of grass is parceled out, species by species, like recess time at an elementary school.  We still have a green pasture because I keep all the animals to a fairly strict schedule of who gets time out there and when.  The grass and clover is very close-cropped, but it is still green.

If you look at it objectively and not with tears in your eyes, the cow is the thing that eats the most, makes the biggest mess, and incurs the largest vet bills.  

The sale of offspring from Bea's litter of piglets, Bessie's 2013 calf, and chicks/turkeys/ducks/geese that have sold this summer help me to afford the necessities of some new fence panels and things like that.  But any money that was happily tucked away in savings from those sales has dwindled quickly, with the vet bills of the past month.

The vet asked "Will you replace her when the time comes?"  And my response was "I'm not sure".  

I added "Having Bessie has been a great adventure, but....I don't think that our little property is really the best place to care for a cow".  

His response:  "I think you're on the right track with your thinking.  You've shown that you CAN manage a cow and calf on this property, and you've done a good job.  But if you chose not to keep a cow, but to focus on smaller livestock, that would make good sense for the future."

We talked about whether I want to try to breed her again, and I think we need to give it one more try.  No breeding means no calf, which means no milk.  And I can't keep her as a pasture-pet, not when she eats $5 worth of hay every single day of the year.  She needs to produce a daily supply of milk, and that also means she needs to give birth to a calf to raise and sell, every year that she lives here.

At least for now, I'm quite relieved that I won't need to send her to the sale barn, or to the butcher.  Either way, the end result if it was her "time" was clearly etched in my mind.  Not fun at all to look into your cow's huge brown eyes and think of the light in them just not....there, anymore.  

She is the biggest expense and biggest maintenance, for sure, but having Bessie here HAS been the biggest risk and adventure...and sometimes headache.  But most days I truly love going out there to milk her and feed her and know that I own a cow.

A weird thought that doesn't really fit this story, but here it is anyway:  

I've played around with potential farm names for a while.  Some are humorous (Jeremy's idea:  "Chicken Invasion Farm")  Some make reference to our Dutch heritage.  Or the "Fainting Farmer Farm", making reference to my almost-reaction when helping the vet castrate the first litter of piglets.

While I was sniffling over the potential fact that our farm would be without Bessie, I cried harder thinking of "Bessie's Place" as the farm name.   Or  "Farm Without a Cow", abbreviated to FWC for livestock registration purposes.  

(Pigs, goats, even rabbits get a "farm name" or abbreviated farm name when you register them with their breed association.  Bea's piglet could be "Dykstra's Farm Piglet" or...."FWC Piglet" or "Fainting Farmer Piglet".  But I don't really want a farm name or abbreviation that always needs explanation, followed by blank stares...  Silly. 

Back to Bessie:  

I still hope that Bessie can be productive in the future.  I think it's more a "hope" now rather than the reality that it has been for a few years now.  It hasn't been easy managing her bouts of mastitis, or how to share milk with her calf but not affect the amount of milk we get, or any number of other learning-curve things we've worked through.  Whether she can be productive to any extent will remain to be seen.

At this point, her milk supply is down (no surprise after the last few weeks!), I haven't been able to keep up with shoveling manure and keeping things as clean as I want to, she eats half of what we bring in as feed and hay.  

We don't have enough grazing for her and her calf, (although she is a power-house grazer when I let her into a heavily weeded area.  Down-to-the-ground in no time.)  

Her water trough is the one that needs the most gallons added to it in sub-zero arctic winter weather.  

If she is not pregnant after all of this messing around with accidents, more vet fees will be adding up....  

It is difficult to look at all of that and not throw in the imaginary towel.  

At 4 in the morning, the doubts about keeping a family cow seem to be a bit overwhelming and I finally gave up trying to sleep...  :(

But....it doesn't seem to be time to send her away just yet.  For that, I am immensely relieved and thankful!

Now....If only I'd wrangled her calf into his stall as I hurriedly closed everyone in last night, I could look forward to fresh milk in a few hours. 

Time to get back on schedule with cow-management and do my best to care for her.

Laura

The story of an old cow....

Some news on Bessie.  

She had two "stupid-cow" incidents last month.  

Keep in mind, we had just had the vet out to artificially inseminate her with Dutch Belted "stuff", and it looked good that a successful pregnancy would result....  The vet had been pleased, and if an artificial insemination session was going to be "picture perfect", this was a good one...  Looking good for a calf in 9 1/2 months from that point (end of July, for a calf in May)...

First, she let herself into the barn and ate 75 pounds of grain.  The door between the cow area and the interior of the barn is usually shut tight, but....once in a while she jiggles the knob and it creaks open.  That hasn't happened in over a year, so this was totally unexpected.  There were stacks of straw in the way.  She barged past those.  I had been reorganizing the feed barrels and she was able to get to the goat feed, which she hadn't been able to reach in the set-up before.  There were pallets under the feed barrels.  Usually the pallets would have been a sort of cattle-deterrent, because she would not step on them to get to the grain....  But the barrel she tipped was on the edge.  The lid was secured on the top with a bungee cord, but the force of knocking it over must have forced the lid open...  A comedy of errors that was not funny at all.

If not for a noisy duckling that had been inadvertently closed outside of the barn, I would not have known that anything was wrong.  It was 10:30 pm, the duckling was heard and let into the barn, and there stood Bessie where she didn't belong, with bales of straw tumbled down around her, and the feed barrel dumped over and empty... 

The vet was called a few hours later after I did some research and kept an eye on Bessie.  Her "rumen" noises and burping were becoming irregular and I didn't know if she was starting to bloat or not.  (They can't get rid of expanding gases in their stomachs if the gases are building faster than the burping expels it, or something like that).  She was miserable.

The vet had me help, and it was NOT pleasant.  Bessie wasn't bloating, yet....but there was too much grain for her body to digest and there was a treatment to keep her system from digesting as much as she had eaten....  

He tied her to a post, threaded a long clear tube down her throat, had me listen to the stethoscope to be sure the tube was where he needed it to be, and then we wrestled with her.  First it was a large amount of mineral oil, poured by me into a funnel attached to the tube.  The vet swore.  Bessie flinched.  The tube almost dislodged.

Then it was something white and liquid, a whole gallon of it that he had mixed powder with water to produce.  Bessie flailed and fought.  The vet almost got trampled.  He swore.  I swore.  (and then apologized)  :)

It took a few days, but finally Bessie seemed to be eating a normal amount and acting like herself.

But she was very thin.  No telling if the pregnancy had been affected, if it had even been a successful beginning....

If the story ended there, I could say "A duckling saved the day", because without that duckling sounding the alarm outside the barn, Bessie would have gone undetected until morning.  

But no, there is more to Bessie's story of woe....

While we were gone to take our son to college....  She got herself wedged between her milking stanchion and the stall where I put her calf at night.  She was (by the accounts I heard later) on the ground, scootched too far towards the wall to "lunge" in order to stand, wedged on her belly between two structures, and unable to move.

We weren't home, but the farm sitter called the neighbor, and the vet.  The neighbor went home for a reciprocating saw/saws-all after conferring with the vet.  The vet called two more people who left their own farm-work and came over right away.  

The stanchion was cut to set her free.  She had been wedged since at least the night before.  

It took all of those adults to hoist her up and onto her feet.  

When we got home, she was lying down, and the damage was still unknown.  I brought her bucket after bucket of water, and put her hay next to where she was lying.  Her legs were rubbed raw from where she'd been trapped.  There were scrapes along her hips and tailbone from where she must have rubbed against the wood frames of the stall and stanchion.  Her front hoof was tucked under her leg, and looked bad, in my uninformed opinion....She couldn't seem to get herself collected enough to manage the action of lunging forward and standing.  

The vet was planning to come back, and he arrived with bandages, and wrapping for her legs, and with the admonition that the worst-case scenario needed to be talked through before we went back to look at her.  For a cow with no chance of recovery, the worst-case reality is not a pleasant one to think about...

We rounded the corner and she was....standing!  The vet stood there and watched how she put her weight on her front legs, walked slowly around to look at her scrapes, and decided that for the time being, he wouldn't wrap her leg or do anything.  She needed rest and recovery time.  Greedy Johan/Johnny-boy was nursing and she seemed fine with that...

The treatment for Bessie was to turn her out into the pasture with her baby, to keep her off of uneven ground, to bring hay and water to her where she was most comfortable....  Not a harsh requirement for a recuperating milk-cow!  :)

A few days later, I was ready to resume milking her, and she could not get off the ground.  Her leg was somewhat swollen, and held out in front of her as she lay there.  She tried hoisting herself up for grain, but in the end, I put the pan of grain where she could reach it and went for bales of straw to keep her from rolling backward and getting stuck in the slight depression behind where she lay.

Johnny-Boy is finally what made the long-suffering mama cow hoist her 1000 pound bulk off the ground.  And it wasn't because she WANTED to.  It was because he tried to get on top of her.  

Which made my heart sink, because it's very likely that he was responding to the fact that she was NOT pregnant, and doing what comes naturally when one cow/bull/steer is in the vicinity of a fertile cow....  Enough said.

Two and a half weeks later....  Poor Bessie swings her leg out to the side as she walks, and her hoof drags on any uneven ground.  I had been comparing the right leg to the left leg, to see where she might be swollen, but....it's only really obvious from one angle.  The scraped area behind her entire right knee and all down to her ankle are healing, but not looking good (again in my untrained point of view).  The healing area is still raw under the skin that is peeling off in leathery sheets.  When she stands, it seems like she is in pain, and her front legs tremble ever-so-slightly while her head hangs lower than usual.  When I spray the wounds with fly-spray to keep it maggot-free, she flinches and paws her hoof in the air to move it away from the spray.

Like that day we returned, when we first encountered the potential that we'd need to say goodbye to her, I'm preparing for that again.  Hoping that I'm wrong.  But trying to reconcile with what might be our decision to alleviate Bessie's suffering, if it's as bad as all that...  

And then here's what seems harsh, on my own part.  I'm looking at all the hay that we've stored for her for the winter, and thinking of how much farther it would go....  And looking at how much manure I shovel out of her area, and thinking...how much less there would be...  And looking at her area in general, and thinking....what else could I house here if she was gone.  And thinking....would I go out and buy another cow to replace her?  And my honest answer is "probably not, unless we had a lot more land".....  :(

I love my cow.  But maybe it's progress towards a better sense of creature-care reality, to be able to see the (dare I say it) "potential" if there was no cow to care for?  I sure hope it doesn't come to that, at least not yet.

>>I typed all of that yesterday morning.  Before the skin peeled away from the back of her knee enough for me to see movement beneath the liquid-y surface.  She has maggots in her knee, probably shielded from the fly spray that would have killed them by the skin that has only now peeled back far enough to reveal them.  

The vet is coming by to see her this morning.  I had a good cry after making the phone call to request that he come and see her.  I'm kind of a mess this morning, waiting....  

But there is a barn full of hungry (and vocal!) critters out there waiting for their daily care, so....time to pull myself together and face the day.  

Maybe the news won't be as bad as I anticipate.  I'll type more when I know.

 

Laura