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