It has been very hot and dry for the past several weeks. The cows have been handling it ok. Plenty of water, grazing early and late with hay under the shade trees for the hottset part of the day. We have moved evening milking from 4:00 to 6:00 to avoid having them on huddled together on concrete in the heat of the day.
But we lost an older Holstien completely unexpectedly two days ago. She was fine that morning, and dead in the shade by evening round-up. No signs of pain or struggle, no signs of windmilling before death. Looked like she had just laid over and died while chewing cud with the rest of the herd.
I hauled her over to my place to cut her up for dogfood. When I slit her stomach cavity, gallons of blood gushed out. Along with clotted blood pieces the size of sofa cushions. The organs were very pale, the lungs literally white with just a hint of pink. Even the meat looked like meat from a cow that had been properly bled, not the meat from a cow that just died and the blood stayed in the meat.
I called my vet and described to her the situation. She said the cow had died of an aneurysm and was not actually that uncommon in stressful situations, especially in big milky holstiens. There wasn't anything we could have done. I was glad at least to know what killed a good cow. I don't like mystery deaths.
We picked up our little Milking Shorthorn bull calf a few weeks ago. He is settling in quite well, though is still very shy(fine with me in a bull). He isn't the roan colour that I prefer in shorthorns, rather the red and white. But colour isn't everything(isn't anything really, when breeding for health and production) and he is out of very nice, medium-sized MS lines. I didn't want a giant MS bull. I'm betting that I might get some roans out of him and our holstien cows.
Here he is the day we wormed and unloaded him. He is going through an wakward stage, but is already starting to change his looks. His name is Ace. The heifers got quite excited by the trailer. They will start calving in September.
Turns out we are not quite as done with calving as I thought. One more to go, although I swear it must be an immaculate conception since as far as I remember this cow hasn't been running with a bull since last June. She is getting close but still hanging in there. I hate hot weather calves.......
Went to do the usual rounds of checking the heifers and bulls the other day and couldn't find Vader, our younger Jersey bull. He never leaves the heifers, so this worried me. I finally found him after walking the entire pasture. He was by the nasty old pond, on the complete opposite side of the pasture from the heifers. He was knee deep in mud and happily grazing on pond weeds. He must have been having a good time all by himself, because he had dried mud all over his face. He saw me and gave out a "huff!" and then went back to eating. I take care around my bulls, always, but I sure do enjoy them. They are so primitive.
And I just realized we have a super spy cow on the place now. I went to tag the youngest heifer and she is 007............
One on my personal website
