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

Hog heaven (?)

So much has happened this summer.  I'm not even sure where I left off.  

I think you all know that Bea the American Guinea Hog had her piglets.  Eight of them.  We did not need to give iron shots, or clip needle teeth.  They chose to nest with Mama Bea instead of under the cozy (and dangerous) heat lamp.  (Heat lamps are a leading cause of barn fires).  None got crushed, because Bea carefully lowered herself each and every time to give them a chance to move.  And when she rolled her fat bulk onto her side for nursing, if a piglet squealed from underneath her, she scattered the others in order to get up and stop the squealing youngster from getting hurt.

They grew fat and sassy and at 8 weeks old they still wanted to nurse and not leave their attentive and long-suffering mama.  Watching them scamper in the pasture every afternoon was a joyful event.  They were weaned gradually, since they would be picked up in a gradual timeframe.  Two left mama one week, two the next, and so on...  She still had plenty of milk when the last two left her for their weaning area at 10 weeks old.  

All eight went to their new homes between mid- and late-July.  

Two went to Wisconsin, to a small family farm.  

Two went to our friends Michele and Damon, where those two decided to go on a 2 week long adventure.  They escaped during a thunderstorm, were given up for lost, and showed up in a neighbor's duck house 15 days after they disappeared, none-the-worse for wear.  Smart little pigs!

Two went to a small farm in Marengo.  The little gilt (female) was the one who missed her Mama the most, so much so that I called off the pick-up on a Friday thinking the little pig was sick from the 90+ degree heat.  She perked up when put back with mama, then moped again on the day she was supposed to leave with her brother.  On arriving at their new home (moping didn't work this time!), she perked up and both have been doing great.  

Two went to the petting-section of the county fair south of Milwaukee for the first week away from here, and now have settled in at their new owner's place.

Bea promptly helped the boar (Boris) to escape so that she could um....drown her sorrows?  In the mud wallow.  With a fertile male.  

We were already expecting October babies from Rose, but now I'm watching Bea to see if she's expecting piglets as well.  Sheesh!

Boris the naughty boar was bought a few weeks later by the same farmer who bought the last 2 piglets, and is happily setting up his kingdom with 3 potbelly sows.

The piggy line-up changes continue....

My daughter and her boyfriend brought a new boar prospect back from Kentucky for me, choosing the name "Batman" because he has super-powers....  Well, he held his smelly stuff and didn't stink up their car for 8 hours or so, so his super-powers relate to pooping.  But....he is already being sought-after by a couple of other breeders, because he has a great pedigree that brings great genetics to the Midwest area of Guinea Hog breeders.  I have promised him to a breeder up by Madison, after he makes some quality babies here.  Bea spoiled the timeline a bit by setting Boris free....but we'll deal with that and move on.

One replacement boar was apparently not enough....so I purchased the full brother to Boris from the friends in Michigan who bred Boris, and that young boar has a great name to match his personality:  "Officer Friendly".  Officer Friendly hears me enter the barn and starts talking.  He keeps up a running dialog until I come over to scratch him.  He plops on his rump and waits expectantly, then s-l-o-w-l-y sinks down onto his side for belly scratches.  :)  

Jeff's reaction to the name when I suggested it?  "Well, some people call cops 'pigs', so why not name a pig after a cop?"  I need to get a photo of Officer Friendly devouring a gooey frosted donut.

And....yesterday I picked up 3 pigs that were supposed to be "feeders" (destined to be pork) from friends in Wisconsin who are selling their farm, buying an RV, and packing up their whole family for a year of cross country home-schooling.  

The female hog was so nice that I asked about getting her registered so that I could use her for future breeding.  The farmer was happy to oblige, and insisted that he would not take any extra money for her (she was already priced well below the market price).  

That young girl (gilt) is named Cameo, and....as if to prove that it was the right name for her, she took note of the partially open window in her new living quarters, launched herself through it, and promptly landed for a cameo-appearance in the pen with Batman.  (Luckily no mating took place before I could scramble out there and deposit her back THROUGH the window and slam it shut!)  Maybe her name should have something to do with gymnastics....I've never seen a pig jump like that before.

That's probably enough to start your head spinning, so I'll just leave it at the hog-status for today:

Eight piglets placed, one boar sold, two pregnant mamas, two new boars growing to make their mark on AGH genetic diversity next spring, one new gilt for future breeding, two new feeders, and one feeder barrow who will leave in October for his date with destiny.  

Lots of poop for me to shovel before the snow flies, and that's just the hogs!

Other updates to come soon.... 

Laura

Boris leaves the farm

In the photo, that's Boris in the lead, with roly-poly Bea off to the left and Taffy trying to see what the hogs were so interested in....chokecherries that had fallen and provided good snacking for the hogs.  Taffy didn't understand what all the excitement was about...  

Our boar went to live with some nice new piggy ladies last night.  

He was a gorgeous specimen of his breed....except that one important male part never descended to the position it was supposed to be located.....  He never knew the difference, and continued to live a care-free and rather boisterous hog's life, always friendly and curious, and dropping to the ground in hopes of a belly rub...

Intended to breed register-able American Guinea Hog piglets for our farm, he was not going to ever fulfill that destiny here because of the physical nature of his problem.  

However, he could be used for breeding piglets which would never be registered, even better if he was bred to a sow of a different breed, and the buyer of 2 of Miss Bea's piglets saw him and wanted him for breeding her potbelly sows.  The buyer was made fully aware of his less-than-perfect condition and wanted him anyway.  

(Miss Bea and Rosie themselves may be pregnant with his offspring, as we speak....and those potential piglets will never be registered, but should be gorgeous unregistered babies none-the-less)

Happy ending for Mr. Boris (aka John Hamhock), because if he stayed here, the only thing left for him was....a one-way ticket to becoming little white-paper-wrapped packages in our freezer.

Happy ending for us, because the original purchase price was essentially paid back by his new owner, and we will pick up his full brother (one year younger, same parents) in a few weeks to take his place as head-hog in the breeding program....

 

Laura

Update on Bessie

Finally today, 36 hours after Bessie needed late-night, emergency vet treatment for foolishly eating more than 50 pounds of grain and feed when she broke into the barn, she looks and seems better.  

Yesterday, her sides were lookied as if she was 9 months pregnant

Yesterday, she lay around and munched hay, but only a few mouthfuls and only the good alfalfa.

Yesterday, she grazed some grass and then lay around some more.

Yesterday, she left trails of muckiness wherever she went, the aftereffect of the mineral oil and other liquid that the vet had me pour down the tube and into her stomach while he restrained her.

Yesterday, her bony ribcage was almost masked by the bulk of her swollen belly.

Yesterday, she kicked at her stomach now and then with her back leg, or butted herself in the side with her head.

Yesterday, she still stood with a slightly glassy-eyed look and just wasn't herself.  And I watched her for signs of bloat, just in case....

Today, she is eating grass hay, in addition to the alfalfa hay.

Today, she is vigorously swishing flies away with her tail, and tossing her head.

Today....her sides are the way they are supposed to look.  Slightly bony, ribs showing, like the old dairy cow that she is.

Today, I'm feeling that she will be OK.  :)

The vet should be here later to write up transport papers on a hog that will go to Wisconsin, and undoubtedly he'll want to check on his patient.  I hope he sees the progress that I'm seeing, and lets me know that she should be just fine.

Getting an official diagnosis would be a good thing for more reasons than what seems obvious.

Yes, we will still have our milk cow.  

Even more so, she should be pregnant from the artificial insemination 2 weeks ago.  If all is well, she won't lose the embryo/calf and the pregnancy should continue without incident. 

Hopefully, if she makes a full recovery, she will continue to be productive for us and live to be 15, or 18 years old.  Who knows.  

I'm learning more and more that there's no sure thing in the caring for livestock, no matter how careful you are, they can still do stupid things and cause unexpected trouble.  (That should come as no great surprise!) 

She's a healthy old girl, if she would just stay where she belongs.  

Two nights ago, as the vet was instructing me to pour the mineral oil and magnesium water into the funnel, which poured down the tube and into her belly, I said "It would be really great if I could say 'Now she's learned her lesson and she won't do that again'".  Before I even finished chuckling as I said it, the vet and I both shook our heads and agreed that, if she had the chance, she'd eat another barrel full of grain without stopping to think twice.  Sigh...

Laura

Bessie

Waiting for the sleepy vet to come out on an emergency visit.  Miss Bessie the cow let herself into the barn sometime after 8:30 this evening, and knocked over a metal trash can to get at the "sweet feed" inside, despite the bungee cord that was supposed to hold the lid on, despite having grazed and munched hay all day long....    

She ate about 50 pounds of that feed, at least a full bag's worth, which includes pellets/grain/molasses, and she is now expanding up like a balloon (think....Harry Potter's aunt, when she floats away into the sky.  Well, not quite that bad...).  She won't eat any baking soda (not that I blame her on that one)

No normal gut-noises, no systemic burping or chewing of the cud, and she looks like she did before her calf was born.  But bloat can be life-threatening if not treated.

Luckily, around 10:30 pm, I heard a quacking duckling that didn't get inside the barn with the others.  Going out to see what the ruckus was about, I discovered Miss Bessie munching on straw bales that she'd tumbled all around her.  

Since then, I've kept an eye on her and her symptoms, and finally called the vet when I found a drawing online of "mild bloat", "moderate bloat", and "severe bloat".  If I had any doubt before, that is what proved to me that I needed to rouse the poor vet out of bed.  :(

She isn't lying down in agony so I'm trying not to panic...  I've never seen bloat in a cow before, and it's always unsettling when the new situation occurs and I don't know what to watch for.

I was feeling so proud of the new arrangement inside the barn, too....all the feed barrels in a row, labeled, up on pallets to keep the bottom of the barrels off of the moist concrete.   

I always double-check that door that allows us to go through to the cow area...but I didn't bolt it shut tonight.

I guess there's more to do, to avoid this unexpected turn of events in the future.  The learning curve continues, hopefully with our adventurous milk cow still part of the picture....  

 

Laura