Good ol' Jackee gave us quite a scare last week. For those of you not familiar with her, Jackee is not only one of our top milkers, she is notorious among our herd. She has an uncontrollable desire to mother any new calf that appears on the scene, even going so far as to muscle her way in whenever any of the other cows freshens, making sure she is in on the licking and nursing of the new young'un. Last Thursday, she had her own calf, out in the pasture, in the night, with no problems whatsoever. In fact, she tricked Dan when she came sauntering into the parlor that morning with the other ladies. Never dreaming that Jackee would ever leave a calf of her own, Dan saved her til last, thinking that she would probably freshen sometime that morning. However, when he checked inside... NO CALF! That could only mean one thing: she'd had it, fed it, and told it to stay put in the pasture while she was away. Sure enough, after letting all the ladies back out to pasture after milking, there he was, lounging in the sunshine.
Since Jackee's one of the matrons of the herd and an old pro, we had no reason to suspect that anything could go wrong. The next morning when she didn't come in to be milked with everyone else (and to see her baby) meant that something was amiss. Luckily, I hadn't yet left to take Jill to school so that when Dan called, frantically saying that Jackee was down with milk fever, I was able to get the medicine he needed. She was in such a bad state though, essentially comatose but still breathing, that we didn't have much hope for her. Not only was she laying with her head down hill, which caused her to bloat, she had aspirated some cud into her lungs. Although Dan was able to get her to stand up after a while, she couldn't eat or drink and was not in the least interested in her new baby. This was truly a bad indicator. A visit from the vet that afternoon reassured Dan that he had done everything he should have, and some additional medicine was administered. By Saturday morning though, she was no better. A cow that doesn't eat for long periods of time is not normally given much hope and one who is having trouble breathing is even worse off. Another call to the vet....she concurred with Dan that Jackee had probably aspirated the cud and administered some powerful antibiotics to combat the pneumonia which accompanies such events. No one thought she would survive the day.
Meanwhile Dan moved her into a comfortable, cool spot in the pasture near the barn, in the shade of the hedge row. He brought her baby out to keep her company and we all hoped for the best.
Unbelievably, slowly, throughout the day Jackee began to show signs of improvement. By now it had been 2 days since she'd eaten or drank. But this time, when we offered her a bit of grain, she gingerly licked at it, then took a sip of water, and nibbled at a bit of hay. Regaining her interest in the tasty grain, she eventually ate the whole lot then began talking to her boy, which was the best sign of all. By the end of the day, while not exactly back to normal, she was dramatically better than she'd been just that morning.
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Here she is, back to her old self, with the new little bloke, Billy Jack.
Still a little lame from her traumatic ordeal, Jackee is not only raising her own son, she's taken on one of our month old veal calves as well. Since she gives a lot of milk, raising 2 babies is easy for her. In fact, she's quite in heaven, what with 2 babies to mother. Maybe it was that attitude that gave her the will to get through such a harrowing experience. We are certainly all glad to have her back.
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