Grass Tetany sucks

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Our best cow (Violet) died.

At least she was courteous enough to do it 5 days after giving us a beautiful heifer (who is now in the barn and has started to learn that head and neck scratches go with drinking milk replacer).

We have been planning on flushing multiple cows over the next two years, and those plans haven't changed ... just Violet was going to be the focal point of the program.

Plan B will probably involve a longer time horizon, another flush or two on a couple of the other ladies, and the heifer that just hit the ground (Beatrix) and her two years older (half) sister (Zeta). We'll get there ...

I will say this, it's been a long (!) time since I cried over the death of an animal. I loved Violet. She was a great cow and a great mother. Here's a good picture of her 2.5 years ago when she was about 8.5yrs old.

WCCC_Violet_-_8yrs_old.jpg


Not sure if it was tetany or not ... she was fine, and then she was not. Collapsed at the edge of the pond, never to move again.

RIP Violet.
 
She was really nice!... And I was right, murphy was an optimist,... of course it happens to your best cow!

I lost one of my best to a stroke last spring... I had never heard of cows having strokes, but she had all the symptoms, and her blood tests were textbook perfect... At the end she either laid down wrong, or fell and couldn't get back up, and was bloating, so I put her down... It was hard, but I didn't have to think about it long. I got just one heifer from her, but she's turned out really good... She was going on 9.

I had to put her sister down last fall, and that was a long time coming, which really didn't make it easier, That was Rosie, she gave me 16 calves in 17 years, best mother in the herd, and she was good at making heifers, I have 4 of them, the oldest is 8 and is outstanding... They're crossbreeds, but she's the kind of cow that bull or heifer, you know it's going to be an awesome calf in the fall and don't go too far wrong keeping. Rosie was getting bad teeth, and really bad arthritis... Another winter wouldn't have been good to her.
Here's Rosie, the day I put her down, with her daughter Kama (yes, I still have her!)
IMG_9551_zps8a211623.jpg


Sorry to hear it.. and for going on about it myself... May her daughters do well for you!
 
A silver lining ...

In February, we had a calf born into a foot of snow and -30 windchills. Here is her story --> viewtopic.php?f=7&t=90395

Summing it up, we took that heifer and her mama (a cow named Xenia) to a specialty vet in Hot Springs, AR in mid-March. The heifer (Begonia) is doing very well.

We decided to go down to get Xenia and bring her home ... first to try to see if we could graft the orphaned heifer (Beatrix) to her ... and second because it's time to do the AI's right around the corner and we needed to get her home and re-acclimated to life here beforehand.

Well, our local vet (a very well respected guy) thought it would be a low-probability deal with using Xenia as a nurse cow for Beatrix because, while Aubracs are known for their performance on range, they're typically not known for performance under heavy handling situations (like, say, a Jersey nurse cow might be). We understood his concerns, but what we also knew was Aubracs have strong maternal instincts, and Xenia's sire is renoun for the quality of his daughters ... so ...

...we came home with Xenia on Tuesday and arrived home around 5:30pm ... quickly off to my sons baseball game (which they won, my first game as the head coach of anything!) ... then home ... and we put Beatrix on the trailer with Xenia. Within 45 seconds, she was nursing. After about an hour, we closed the partition on the trailer keeping them close (but separated) all night ... then, in the AM, we opened it back up, and she nursed again. We left them together the rest of the day and the next night. About 36 hours after first meeting each other, we turned them both into the pasture. And this morning, you'd never know they weren't mom/daughter given how they were moving around together -- heck, even Xenia grunted at me a little bit when she thought I was a little too close to her new baby.

I'm very pleased!
 
That's great! Sometimes things just work, it may be an exception, so it sure makes you appreciate it! I had a cow that lost her calf at birth (breach, DOA), and I kept her in a pen for a while and milked her a couple times.. a couple nights later I had a cow have twins, and she has a hard enough time taking care of one, so I didn't even try to put the second one on her... It was one of those miserable nights, raining, 2 am, etc, so I took the heifer in to the shop, gave her a good meal, and put her to bed. In the morning I brought her up the chute to the pen where the new momma was, and she looked down the chute to the calf, MMmm'd, and it was the end of the story, it was hers.. I didn't let her sniff her dead calf, so I think she thought I had taken it, and was returning it? Whatever it was worked really well, it was too bad she was a freemartin because she was really impressive and I wasn't going to take 12:1 odds against my favour.
 
That is wonderful news! :clap: What a great cow! Actually both of them, yours and Nesikeps!
Gotta love those happy stories! :D
 

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