If it isn't one thing, it is another..

JeffNY · #1 11/29/05, 09:47 PM

Well at 9:00 I went down to the barn to clean up behind the heifers, and give them some hay. Upon doing so our red holstein was holding her left front leg (her left) kind of strange. Well I figured, baahhh she is fine. So a few minutes later when she was standing there, this time it under her, I noticed "that ain't right". It looked twisted some, bulged to the side. Well sure enough, something ain't right. Now of course it has to happen to a good heifer, one that is valuable, and one that was timid that became friendly and trusting. Not only that, one that I plan to flush next July. Well the vet was coming anyways that afternoon to remove some teats (extra teats) off a Jersey, and to band a bull calf. She looked at it, and couldn't determine what was up. So she went down, got a portable X-Ray machine, and took a couple X-Rays. It is a fracture at what would be our wrist. More or less the last joint before the hoof. The good thing about this, it is not her main bone, it is the joint and IS repairable. The only concern would be, would her gate be proper? As in, will she walk properly if I showed her.. She is fixable, and even if she has a slight limp, or strange gate, as long as she survives, and is ok. The vet seems to think she will be fine, checking with Cornell to see what they charge (seems to think 1000 for the procedure. However she might be able to do it here. Either way it does suck, and I have no idea how it happened. She could have done this standing up somehow. It happened in the barn, in her stall. It sucks, but atleast it is fixable. Atleast she isn't a full grown cow, weighing 1500lbs. She is 1100lbs, still in her youth. But first the warts, now this? Life on the farm has good days, and when the bad days hit, they hit with force.

Jeff

Jennifer L. · #2 11/30/05, 08:41 AM

That's too bad, but at least you have a cow yet. I went out to the barn yesterday morning to find one of my herd dead from bloat. I'd left the barn the night before at 11 PM and when I got out there the next morning she was already quite cool. She must have been already in the early stages of it when I milked her the night before. I always feel really bad about losing a cow to bloat because it's a terrible way to die, too.

And not only losing the cow and feeling bad about it, you've got to get it out of the barn! Managed to get her by the road without a car going by and giving me and the cow a good look over, anyway.

Oh, well. Sh*+ happens. Wish it wasn't so expensive, though. She was my only Red and White Holstein, too.

Jennifer

JeffNY · #3 11/30/05, 12:09 PM

Red holstein too eh? There aren't many out there, what little there is they are usually good ones too. I saw the X-Ray for red and basically what happened was the joint slipped some, didn't break, more or less ripped some tendons. So they get it back in join, cast it. She should be fine!

Sorry about that cow Jennifer, Sh*t does happen, its a shame when it does happen!

Jeff