Oct. 23, 2007 - Ode to Salt and Pepper
As I mentioned earlier, we got 2 calves with our dairy cow, Brown Sugar. The Jersey we named Sugar Daddy and the Holstein was given the name of Salt and Pepper, for obvious reasons.
Each morning and evening, after we finished milking, we would turn Sugar Daddy and Salt n Pepper in with Brown Sugar. They would eagerly attack her teats and finish milking her out. This was a great deal of help in preventing Brown Sugar from getting mastitis again. And the calves just *loved* that mama milk. :)
This also enabled us to be able to skip a milking if we needed to be away from home. And that was needed each Sunday evening as our church services are a great distance from our home and the meetings last all day. We would milk Brown Sugar in the mornings, then turn the calves in with her and leave them there all day.
They grew fast having access to fresh mama milk every day. By the time they were 6-7 months old, they had almost weaned themselves. So we eventually separated them from Brown Sugar permanently. And they did well in a pen with our colt.
But Saturday night, Salt and Pepper did not come up when we fed the others. Ray and I went hunting for him. We finally found him hidden underneath a tree. When we tried to get closer, he got up and walked rather slowly around the pen (which is very large and wooded) til he got to the water trough. There he drank some water and we left him alone.
Sunday he still did not come up when Ray fed the others. Again he looked for Salt and Pepper and found him under the same tree. On Monday, he was in obvious distress. Ray spent hours working with him, running a hose down his throat to relieve the pressure of the gas that had built up inside him.
But this morning Salt and Pepper was dead. :(
The children have taken the news well. And I know this is a fact of farm life that we must all adjust to. But it still stinks.
Comments
Oct. 28, 2007 - Untitled Comment
Posted by hugs4Him
I'm so sorry; that's very sad. Do you know what happened?
