Life on the farm

Is NOT kind of laid back. I’m not sure where John Denver got his ideas from, honestly. We’ve been slowly cutting back the size of our herd of cattle for the past few years, and planning further cuts. With occasional discussion of selling all the cows and finding something else to do with our forty acres.

At any rate, on Friday hubby noticed that a couple calves had pink eye. He phoned and talked to the vet, then asked me to pick up meds on the way home from work. So I did, but when he had a closer look that evening, he realized that the problem was more wide-spread than he’d thought. We bought MORE meds (basically a type of penicillin) and rounded up some help for this morning. It took a couple of hours once we got our system going, six of us working like clockwork (okay, not QUITE that smoothly!) and dosing cows and calves alike with intramuscular shots.

Hubby did get on the wrong side of a retreating cow a couple times and will doubtless have a few bruises to show for it later, if not a cracked rib. He’s in a tad of pain but is also in the middle of haying, so he’s back out on the tractor now, driving in circles raking the crop he cut a couple days ago.

We’ll see in a day or two if the belligerent bovines are improved. Sure hope so. I don’t want to do this again, or call the vet down for actual farm consultation.