We are now three years in on our farm life journey. Yes, I know I have skipped a lot of this time. Hopefully I can go back and fill in some of the gaps soon. For now, this is where we are. We definitely are still learning what all farm life entails. We bought our first cows from the neighbor across the street. They have always just been there, out in the pasture, no barn or anything, no separating them when one is having a baby, just out there. They go to the woods in the day for shade, and at night to sleep. We have always just looked out there and had a new baby. Since then, we have added two different sets of younger cows to our herd. Three brown cows and three black cows, all of which are now pregnant at the same time.
Fast forward to this past weekend. Saturday morning, we noticed that one of the black cows was missing, #4 (I never did name these, so we have just called them by their tag #). So, we went looking for it. After riding the fence line and the tree line and all around the pond with no luck we decided she must be in the woods. We drive our mule through all the way back. When we came back out into the open field we see her, so I assume we scared her out. There beside her is a new baby calf, just a little bitty tiny thing. Elated, we watch them all day to make sure everyone is doing good, and we are proud new parents!
Sunday morning comes around only for us to only find ONE black cow (#3). Assuming that one of them missing is mama (#4) and her baby, we start wondering if the other one is off to have her baby. So, we ride the tree line again. We find the mama and baby from the day before. All are doing well, so off we go on our mission to find #1. Back to the woods and trails. Halfway in I spot her lying down. As my husband runs over to her, and then myself, there was no mistake. Baby didn’t make it, and mama was in distress not being able to deliver. Let me tell you it is a sickening and helpless feeling. Worried that we were going to lose the mama also, my husband frantically starts trying to help the mama. Our friend’s son was at the back of the property hunting, with no clue what was going on, but we were able to call him up to come help. Between the three of us we literally tried to release the baby for hours and called for help from neighbors. Finally, after googling the situation, my husband and help were able to roll her on her back and spread her legs which I guess helped open up her hips so that we could pull the baby out! Definitely was a new experience for us. Then watching the mama nudge the baby and still clean it up is just heartbreaking!
But now to the topic of the title, as if all that wasn’t enough! The mama cow seemed better, not in distress, but worn out. So now our issue is that she wasn’t getting up, which we thought was from exhaustion, and just needed to rest a bit. No, apparently all of this affected her nerves in her legs. So now “Dr. Paul” is having to give her steroid shots, and lift her with some sort of sling, take food, water, and hay to her, and shovel all around her to keep it clean around her. We thought we were still going to have to put her down. But we have been told anywhere from a couple of days to three weeks she may still make it. Paul has to go give her therapy three times a day, helping her stand up and move around. Who would’ve known…we sure didn’t. She is much stronger and is starting to be able to get her foot straight, but still wobbly and losing her balance some. And we keep hoping…hoping that one morning we will look out in the field and she will be out there eating grass.
The takeaway from this life lesson is that we will never complain about how much hamburger costs again. The average person really is oblivious of what farmers go through to provide quality meat to you.
