Over the past few weeks we have lost two cows. Not lost as in they went walkabout, although I am surprised that we haven’t lost a few that way, but lost as in they died.
The first one to die got sick, sort of. About three or four months ago she broke her leg. We noticed that she had a limp and managed to get her into the stockyards where we gave her a dose of penicillin. Most of the cows who start limping are doing so as a result of footrot. Apparently it is an infection under the hoof, a bit like an abscess, or so I believe.
But the penicillin didn’t fix her up so we got the vet out to have a look. He told us that she had broken her leg. Prior to getting her sore leg the cows were roaming over the far side of the hill at the back of the farm. The hill leads down to a creek, and while they are mostly quite happy there, it seems that she probably broke her leg, probably by getting too close to the creek bed and perhaps falling in.
Whatever the cause, the vet said that she may recover if she is left alone. So we put her in a paddock by herself and made sure that she had plenty of food and water. And there she stayed for a couple of months. She still had her limp and didn’t seem to be putting on any weight, but otherwise she seemed OK. Then one day she lay down and didn’t get up again. The problem for us is that it is very difficult to tell if a cow is suffering much pain. So we don’t know whether we should have done something about her earlier or not.
The second death was a quite different story. We were moving the herd from one paddock to another. I won’t go into the details, except to say that due to my studpidity one of the cows, who unfortunately was pregnant, had an accident and tore a large part of her hide so that a large part of her left side flesh was exposed.
We called the vet but he said it was too bad an injury and the cow had to be put down. She is now buried over the hill and we have all learnt a very sobering lesson.
The strange thing is that even though the extent of the injury meant that the poor animal was in a lot of pain, she didn’t show it, but merely followed the herd into the paddock and grazed with the rest of them. If you didn’t see her wound you would think that she was in perfect health.
The vet said that because these are preyed upon animals they instinctively show no paid, because that would make them a target for predators. So they stoically suffer in silence.
It is a terrible thing to inflict pain on an animal. It was a hard learnt lesson for us, but I’m afraid even harder for the cow. We must be more careful in the future.