Well life is sometimes too busy to do much more than eat-work-sleep--- Have a cold front in, was minus 5-- F scale on the barn thermometer -- - not sure what it is on the C scale-- The wind though makes a wicked wind chill though, and it is supposed to drop on down, predicting minus 39C in town, so if it hits that in town will probably drop to minus --45 here as we are higher and bit closer to the mountains...
My Dexter cow, which I was hoping would replace my Jersey --didn't have enough milk the first year. After we tried to dry her up, she decided to be a self sucker, so we tried putting a crown weaner in her nose, and she still got around that.. Was seriously ticked off with her as I actually had to buy colostrum for the calf she dropped last summer. NEVER had to do that before..She paused self sucking for a small bit, and started again, so I locked her in a stantion, and would let the heifer calf out several times a day to milk her out. Well the bugger figured out how to twist around in the station and suck herself even with the nose ring and being in the station! At 2 months the calf wasn't getting any milk basically at all because of her mother self sucking, so even though it was early to wean her off, we butchered the mother. The mother was young and registered, so that was a not good situation, but she was good for nothing.. She wasn't feeding her calf, and I didn't want her teaching any of the other cows that habit at all... so in the freezer she went.. Put the calf on grain and a bit of milk replacer. After a few months she wasn't doing that good and in spite of being de-wormed- grain and milk replacer was quite skinny, but that whole family tends to be skinny any ways. One evening she had a small amount of the runs, nothing that was severe, one wouldn't even really call it the "runs." it was almost not enough to even basically get noticed.
In the morning she was down and wouldn't get up. later in the day she was gone
After checking more of the poop later in the day, there was a bit of blood in the stool, so am leaning towards Coccidiosis or possibly one of the bigger cows knocked her around and maybe there was an injury.. Although she seemed almost completely normal, and usually I can spot an animal that is even slightly "off".
Couldn't believe how fast she went down and out. Had goats and sheep do that, but never calves, they usually have more resilience than sheep or goats.. Anyways, so even though I still have the Piedmontese here, I am thinking about something that can give me a bit of milk and can handle the colder climate- dual milk and meat. I have seen some of the "belties" that have incredible sized udders, although sometimes they just have a fatty udder when it is large, so wondered if anyone had milked one...
That is nice Gelbvieh in the picture, but remember Gelbvieh cattle come from the same breed as the Brown Swiss- just the meat strain of Brown Swiss basically--nice cattle but pretty large, I don't needs 8 gallons of milk a day, so am looking for something smaller...