Steadfast Steps: The craziness continues.....

Friday, January 13, 2012

The craziness continues.....

Saturday morning my friend Dawn called to tell me about a cow she saw on Craigslist. I checked out the pictures and had to call about it. She was a 7 year old Jersey cow that had lost her calves in December and was now almost dry with mastitis in one quarter. We came a negotiable price and on Monday morning we were off to buy a cow! Arriving at the farm to see Molly, I realized that she was in worse shape than I had anticipated. She was in a small pen in muck 6 inches deep. She was not getting proper nutrition and the mastitis in the left rear quarter was out of control. But Molly's personality completely won me over. She was curious, friendly, and quiet. She let us rub her and mess with her. I knew we were taking her home. I also knew I had a long road ahead with regards to helping her get healthy again. She needed good food, minerals, decent hay, and a calf to clean up the mastitis (a calf can heal mastitis twice as fast as I can because of the constant butting/massaging the calf gives her). She had a little milk in the other 3 quarters and I am hoping to bring her back to full milk by putting calves on her. We stopped at the dairy on the way home and picked up 4 heifer calves - 2 Holsteins and 2 Jersey crosses. We picked out the newest born calves we could find because they have the best chance at survival. The dairy doesn't treat the calves real well, so it wasn't surprising that we did end up losing 1 this morning. The other 3 calves are looking great. Molly has adopted 2 of them (she wanted all 3, but we decided 2 would be enough for her to handle and we will bottle feed the other one). Molly is already looking better and her mastitis is slowly, slowly loosening up. Today I turned Molly and the 2 calves out into the pasture with the rest of my cows. I am excited for the possibilities I have with her!