The vet in our area is rather good with cattle and horses. However, he has been, in the past, a little quick to say "Sell it." When my spouse and I started our business on our own (away from my family) we started by buying diers from the auction. We had little money but I had the time. It worked very well for us for the most part. I did all my own vet work, if we needed vet assistance it was given to me via phone. If he prescribed a medication, he left it in a box at the clinic for me to pick up.
We started loosing calves all to the same symptoms. He was unwilling to take the time to do the research and necropsy's to find out what was going on. His answer was sell em'. That wouldn't have done us any good. They were to sick all of a sudden.
Doing research via an online vet, I was able to figure out that we had a sillenium dificiancy, only in the pasture where the calves were being kept. There were no cattleman in the area who could help either. Most of them around here just take a loss when one gets sick and goes on with his day.
Then having turned to a cattleman, who supposidly had about 40 years of cattle ranching in his blood, we had a pretty good relationship. When he needed help we went and helped, but it seemed that when we asked for help he was no where to be found or he hadn't a clue of an answer. We had asked him to come help us castrate our calves. Each year, for one reason or another (his reasons not ours), he has not made it out to help us castrate with a knife. (his way) If he was to help us we pretty much had to run our opperation his way. So we didn't band.
Long story short, we had lost money by selling bull calves the last few years and this year we had had enough.
Now the calves were 5 months old and still bulls. So I got fed up and banded the calves. It was the only way I saw to get it done with no help. I wasn't about to try and stringem' up and castrate them by myself.
Now since we met we had not banded due to the fact that he thought that it was the cruelest thing that you can do. He is 100% against banding!!!
He says that it is like kicking a puppy. He says that the calves suffer so terribly! None of our calves have suffered or had any problems.
When he finally found out that we had banded he flew off the handle. He said that he can never speek to us again because we were so cruel.
One thing we noticed after it was all said and done was that we were always saving his cattle and teaching him all the things that we had learned. ( started thinking that maybe there was a reason he always sold bull calves
)
So there are two situations that have made us think both ways. When it is something that we need help on we call the vet (only the cow vet) If we don't get the answers we need we turn to other ranchers and the internet. However, we have also figured out that you have to do what feels right. That is the number one thing. The vets (atleast in our are) are looking at the text book way of things. Most ranchers look at what has worked in the past. Plus trial and error. However, just because they have the years and the cattle doesn't mean that they have the experiance (so we learned).
Hope this wasn't to much rambling. Maybe it will help.
Double R
