Farm

For those of you who read my last post “Caring for Tequila,” I wanted to hop back on and give an update.

We saw no signs of improvement so the vet came out to take a second look. This time the vet brought a squeeze chute with them. This type of chute squeezes the cow gently to keep them from moving around. The vet needed to take a closer look and our chute just wasn’t keeping her still enough. We didn’t receive good news. From the sounds of it, she has quite the wound. Something likely punctured her in-between her toes, causing damage to her bone and joints. To learn what our options are we need to take her somewhere; but the problem is we can’t get her to walk farther than a couple feet, let alone onto a trailer and into a vet’s office. The vet gave her another dose of antibiotics which has a withdrawal period of 45 days. This antibiotic helps with pain and infection. We are currently doing our best to keep Tequila comfortable. It is important to keep her wound clean. We are hoping she improves enough in the next week or so to take steps to help cure her but if she doesn’t we might need to make the tough decision to cull her following the 45 day withdrawal period.

We have continued the Epsom salt foot baths. We are pretty lucky that Tequila is tame. We would not be able to do this with most cows. Each evening dad, Megan, Tyler or I catch her with a halter and soak her foot for 10 minutes. We finish by spraying her wound with Iodine. This helps keep flies from bothering it. If you look closely in the photo above, you will notice her ankle is swollen. The swelling has actually gone down but there is still a noticeable difference.

Meet her calf! Her calf is just as healthy and spunky as ever and he takes the opportunity to nurse while we soak her foot. He has become quite tame himself over the last few weeks. Tequila is still providing him with milk but he is getting close to weaning so our calves get supplemented with hay, grass and creep feed (feed for calves). Tequila isn’t moving very far so we have her in a pen with water and hay.

The other cows are out on pasture but as you can see they were ready to move to the next pen! Soon they will be receiving hay as the grass growth is slowing down for the season.

I know this wasn’t the update on Tequila you were probably hoping for but I want to be 100% transparent with all of you. It is important to me that we share the real story of agriculture… both the good and bad days. And on all days we do our best to care for our animals.

I love the new Iowa Farm Bureau campaign and partnership with Fareway!  #RealFarmers, #RealMeat #RealFood! If you have questions about antibiotics, livestock footprint, hormones, etc. Please ask! I will do my best to answer any questions you might have!