Today Love, #15, had her new calf, a little female. Unfortunately, the calf was still-born. She was also undersized which means she hadn’t been developing normally. Normally I’d be worried what could have caused this, but Love is one of the cows that had had issues with bloat earlier this year. Love was treated by the vet along with #28. Both of them received some pretty serious medicine along with the usual manual work. After those two, we started treating them ourselves so I’m confident we won’t have any more issues. Well, I’m confident because they next two cows weren’t cows at all, but steers. Anyway, we don’t use near the medicines that the vet uses so ours shouldn’t have these issues. Nevertheless Love has lost her calf as a result of bloat and it’s a sad day on the farm today.
It’ll be sad this fall as well because Love is a really nice cow and she’ll be getting on the trailer with our other bloat cows to go to the sale barn. To quote another cattleman, “Love your children, forgive your enemies. Do neither for your cows.” That means when a cow has issues in your operation, you cull early and often. Love will be heading to the sale barn as soon as we get a chance to get them loaded.