Yesterday we had the vet out again to look at Benjamin. 3 minutes in, he said I needed to look at getting another bull. I wasn’t too pleased to hear that and wanted to know what the options were. Basically we can try some medicine, and we can try giving him attention, but there isn’t really much to do for him. He has pneumonia for sure, and also may have cancer although that is just a guess. There is a real possibility we will be burying Benjamin in the near future.
We’ve worked really hard on having Benjamin be a nice and gentle bull and he really is. Even when he’s in all this distress, he’s been very gentle and easy-going. Even when we put him in the head gate he just stands there and lets us work, and he patiently waits to exit via the escape door (he’s too big to go through the head gate opening like other cows).
We gave Benjamin 25ml of Bantomine yesterday, and I’ll give him 20ml more today. Last time that helped him perk up and eat some. If we can get him eating, we have some more medicine that has to be given orally that we can give him but per the vet his bull days are over.
Not a good day on the farm yesterday.