Thursday, April 23, 2009

Veterinary Science 101

Well, the girls had a fine lesson in calf-pulling today. I'm proud of their observation, otherwise we would have not only lost the calf, but the cow, also. While getting ready for the day, the Ballerina noticed a Heifer (yep, she was last year's calf) laying in the field alone. She thought it was odd that the rest of the herd was no where around, so she took a closer look out the window and was shocked to see a leg sticking out. Because the heifer was a light cream color, and the calf leg dark brown, it was noticeable from such a distance. Now, here's where their judgement proved lacking a bit. Instead of notifying an adult, the older 2 Dalrymples trekked out into the field to gaze astonishingly at the back side of the poor heifer with the calf sticking out. Finally, Dalrymple #2 came to tell mom, who was just getting out of the shower. Ah, yes, dressed in my town clothes, I went to see how serious it was. It was pretty bad and the calf was already dead. She was hung up on a broken leg. My wonderful calf-pulling husband should have been home from work at this point, but wasn't, so I called him and told him to "GIT ON HOME OR WE'RE GONNA LOSE ONE!" :0) Now, later, when quizzed about what on earth they were thinking by going to the cow themselves, instead of telling an adult, Dalrymple #1 (aka the ballerina) said she thought she could just grab the leg and pull it, but then decided not to try. !!!!!!!!!! My, my, my!!!!!! No tellin' what mighta happened if she had attempted that feat! It took my husband, myself, 2 ropes, and a 4 wheeler about an hour to pull that poor thing. By poor thing, I mean POOR.....it was very small and frail...not sure it would have made it had it survived the birth. Aggravatingly, it was female. It's worse to me when we lose a female b/c I think of all the calves she could have added to the herd. :0( The heifer is not feeling so great. She had already made a bag (was ready to nurse) and hubby says that will make her sick for a couple days. So not only did she experience an excruciatingly painful still-birth, but now she's gotta be sick on top of it. So sad. Right now she's resting, but we are praying she gets up soon and isn't paralyzed from having her calf pulled so roughly (we didn't have any other options due to where she was on the back 40.....NO WHERE NEAR the chute where we could have placed her head and then used a come-along to pull the calf....much easier on the mama than a rope and 4-wheeler, with my husband holding her head and horns. That must have been hard. Think about it.....he was pulling on one end and I was pulling on the other!) The girls got quite a lesson and had lots of questions, which my husband patiently answered while laying on the mama and soothing her.
We all really do love farm life....just not losing calves. Did I mention Junior was hiding behind a sad little tree the whole time? For some reason she was scared of that heifer! LOL Her daddy kept telling her to get over there and watch, but she was scared because he and I kept having to grab the mama by the horns, dig our heels in, and hold on for dear life.
Life on the farm, heh. Is it naptime yet? ;0)

On a better note, I just found out that I won 2 tickets to see Coyote County Loser, which was written and produced by some graduates from John Brown University, our local Christian College! I'm SO excited!!!!

Hope you all have a great weekend! :0)

Jerri

1 comment:

>>> said...

You truly are very busy!