3.5.22
It’s a chilly one outside today. Snow fell last evening and a mantle of white blankets the ground and makes the trees look as if dusted with icing sugar. Sitting here in my easy chair beside my dearest Darrell, a fire blazing in the stove and cup of tea at hand, it is such a peaceful start to the morning. Clearly, we are in for more wintry weather this coming week, but as long as we get some moisture we do not mind. There is still plenty of hay in the barn and grain in the feed tubs.
As I glance around the living room, I see the detritus of the week’s activities scattered here and there. Piled by the front door are the plastic tubs containing my bazaar supplies of tablecloths, signs and such, plus what remaining soaps and lotions I brought home yesterday evening. It was snowing heavily last night when I returned from John Day, so we just plonked the tubs down to be taken care of today. Sitting on a nearby chair is my basket of masks I use in my CPR classes, waiting their turn to be soaked in bleachy water before being reassembled for the next class. It has been a busy week, but a good week.
Sometimes it is nice to just contemplate a day indoors, a day to let oneself be lazy. Chores outside still await as animals are in need of feeding although I did forego milking this morning. Heidi, who is my number one cow now that her mum Lass is in retirement, is following in her mum’s footsteps. She is coming into her 15th month of lactation. Yes, her 15th month and still giving me between 2 and 3 ½ gallons of milk a day! For those not familiar with a cow’s milk cycle, they usually are in milk for around 10 months as a rule. Heidi took a while breeding back as we were trying to go the A.I. route so as to get a purebred dairy calf as opposed to a beef cross one. That did not go as planned so she finally was bred naturally by Henry, our Hereford bull. This however meant her calving date was considerably in the future and the thought of going for a few months without “real” milk was not a pleasant one! However, Heidi has come through and continues to give me, her surrogate calf, a healthy offering of milk each day.
Some of you who follow our milk cow saga may be asking, “where is Blackie?”, Blackie being the cow we bought last year. Well, my friends, that is a tale unto itself and a sad one at that.
I was so excited when we bought Blackie, a Holstein Jersey cross who was in milk and bred to calve at the end of January – one of my previous stories details the arrival of Blackie and the calf she adopted so I shall not elaborate here. Blackie settled in and readily adopted her new little daughter, falling into my milking routine like an old pro. She was low cow on the totem pole in the milk cow paddock, but since we always keep the feeders full of excellent hay, her only disgruntlement came when she had to wait her turn to come into the milkhouse for milking.
I had noticed after she arrived here in August that she was a bit trimmer in form than what she had looked at the farm where we bought her from. In fact, I was having doubts as to if she was indeed bred after all as she did not have that “bred cow” look. So, when I sent a sample of Heidi’s milk off to the lab for pregnancy checking, I sent a sample from Blackie as well which did indeed come back as her being in calf. Whew! That was a relief as I was counting on her freshening right when I needed milk the most. Yet still I was troubled. As another month went by, Blackie, of her own accord, started drying up, producing less and less milk each day despite having a young calf suckling her and me milking her too. She was eating voraciously and was as perky as ever. Maybe she was just a cow who tended to dry up early I thought to myself. Since I planned on drying her up a good two months before she was due to calve, so in mid-November, and I was still getting plenty of milk from Heidi, I was not too concerned. I guess I should mention for those not familiar with the workings of milk cows, that it is good practice to slowly allow a milk cow of “dry up” or cease lactation, a couple of months before they are due to give birth to a new calf.
Soon Blackie was barely giving enough milk for her little adopted calf and still she did not have that bred cow look to her. However, I could “bump” her belly and feel a calf kick me back so knew all was well inside her. November came and I separated the calf from Blackie to the calf’s disgust and kept a close eye on Blackie’s udder. Next day it was soft and flabby and barely produced a squirt of milk. Blackie was not even bellowing for the calf who was certainly bellowing for her adopted mum! Over the course of the next few days… and weeks… I kept a close eye on Blackie’s udder which had shriveled up like a prune.
Then, near the end of December, I noticed one quarter was slightly swollen. Was she starting to get ready to calve and bag up early? I was puzzled as to why only one quarter was filling. The next day I checked her again and was alarmed that the one quarter was warm, swollen and when I squeezed the teat, a nasty discharge came forth signaling only one thing, mastitis! I have never, ever had a cow that has been dry as a bone for well over 2 months have mastitis! Knock on wood, mastitis is something our cows just do not get! I massaged and drained the udder as much as I could then called our vet for advice. An intermammary injection was prescribed.
Blackie was as chipper as ever and never even flinched as I assiduously cleaned her teat and injected the antibiotic up into her teat canal. Hmmm, had she had this done before I wondered? A few days later, quarter number two was hot and swollen and I felt devastated that the mastitis had spread to that one too. Once again, the teat infusion process was accomplished without a movement from the cow. Now all we could do is hope and pray the medicine worked. Other than this, it was just a matter of keeping groceries in front of her and watching her closely. She was still eating and drinking, perky as ever but slowly, despite the excellent hay and grain, was steadily losing weight. We were at our wits end and could only have faith she would bounce back. The medication we infused was such that once in the udder, had to be left in place to do its job, so no milking out or stripping of the udder was to be done.
Mid-January, her two quarters that had mastitis were much reduced in size yet as hard as ever. The two quarters on her left side, which had not been affected by mastitis, were slowly starting to fill as signs of her body changing in preparation for calving began. Colleen our vet had hoped that Blackie would have enough time to make colostrum between the administration of the medication to the affected quarters and calving, so it was good to see those other quarters filling as they should.
On a chilly morning I headed to the milk cow’s paddock to bring Heidi in for milking and to check on Blackie. She was laying down at the top of the paddock and rose to her feet when she saw me but did not come down for her morning grain like she was wont to do. I went to check on her and to my dismay, found not one, but two dead calves laying up near where she usually bedded down. She had not cleaned them off, she did not show any sign of caring for them, was totally disinterested in the wee little things. I was devastated.
Normally, if a cow loses a calf, we will find a surrogate to fill the cow’s need to have a baby. However, I knew this was not going to be the case with Blackie. Within a couple of days, the two quarters that were starting to fill, became empty and dry. The two that were battling mastitis were still hard and now, no amount of massaging could encourage anything to come out of them. All we could do is hope Blackie bounced back.
Over the next few weeks, despite a good appetite and perky appearance, Blackie continued to drop weight at an alarming rate. Soon it became painful to watch her rise from her bed and totter down to her grain tub. The day finally came that we knew a while ago was inevitable. Blackie had to be put down. It was a sad day as Darrell took care of the deed. It is never easy to give up on an animal, you keep hoping for things to improve. What makes it even harder is when that animal is perky and bright eyed, giving you hope that tomorrow things will be better not worse.
So, Blackie is no longer with us. It was a hard pill to swallow as you feel you have somehow failed. Failed the cow, failed in being able to make things right, failed as a farmer. As I sit here this morning sharing this story, I know inside me we did all we could for Blackie. Sometimes things just happen that are beyond our control, and we have to accept that and move on, but it is hard. Life is full of challenges. Facing those challenges, being able to admit and more importantly, accept, when things go awry, is the ongoing lesson of Life. May we all have the courage and forbearance to accept what Life throws at us and appreciate we may not always come out the winner.
