Weaning calves, palping cows, giving shots, attaching fly tags and using a pour on wormer. Girl wouldn't leave the chute and someone decided "nows the right time to use a cattle prod". I had turned away to reload the fly tag pliers when I heard words which really should never be found in a single sentence "cow's on fire". Huh?? What does that mean? I turn around to look at this person and ...... It means exactly what it sounds like it means. It was one of the most effing surreal moments of my young 60 years watching this cow on fire headed toward the 80 or so we'd already finished. A nightmare stream of consciousness scenarios went through my mind in a flash: she'd get to the others and all 80 would burn up; she'd go down in a heap and catch the dry grass on fire and .... that was last year!! Oh yes Thank you Lord for all that rain keeping my hay in the fields. Thank You Thank You Thank You!! But what should I do? What could I do? It crossed my mind to chase her to the pond, drive her into it on foot no less. Maybe catch her, throw her to the ground, roll her around to put out the fire? Sure that would work.. I was running after her but finally just stopped to watch.
So the flames went out after about 45 seconds and no other cows caught fire. She started grazing, amazingly didn't seem the worse for wear. The smell of burnt hair was really bad. We'll keep an eye on her for a few days. She'll be easy to identify.
Amazingly, even after this first hand experience it was difficult to get the help to understand how bad that could have been. The pour on container could catch fire, the pour on stream could catch, a person could have splashed it on them and they could have been burnt.
So the flames went out after about 45 seconds and no other cows caught fire. She started grazing, amazingly didn't seem the worse for wear. The smell of burnt hair was really bad. We'll keep an eye on her for a few days. She'll be easy to identify.
Amazingly, even after this first hand experience it was difficult to get the help to understand how bad that could have been. The pour on container could catch fire, the pour on stream could catch, a person could have splashed it on them and they could have been burnt.
