Life among the Tall Pines: Sprained shoulder, broken leg

My bad year continues. If you remember last week when I alluded to another major cattle crisis, this is it.

Last Thursday, the day after I hauled Buddy to the auction, cow #20 limped into the corral around noon. A few weeks earlier she developed a slight limp in her left front leg. She wasn't in pain but had some limited movement as she walked.

On Thursday she was hopping as now her right front leg was also injured. I put her in the north corral so she didn't have to walk far to eat or drink. Her calf didn't want to join her mother in the corral. The calf wanted to stay with her friends and the herd. So I gave up trying to herd her into the corral to join her mother. After dark the mother started bellowing for her calf to come join her and drink her milk. The calf was with the herd in middle of the hayfield and she was crying back to her mother to come to her. They quit after 1 am. With the first jet takeoff at 6 am they started back up. The calf didn't come to the corral until 7:45 am. I was able to get the calf back with her mother. An hour later the calf was running along the corral fence and crying because she wanted to go back to her friends and the cattle herd. What a spoiled brat. I kept her with her mother.

The mother was the same on Friday. She was worse on Saturday. She was better on Sunday. It appeared Sunday night her left front leg was fine. Only her right front leg was bad. When not eating or drinking or feeding her calf the cow laid down near the feeder, water trough, or the barn. She didn't walk unless she had to. When laying the cow didn't appear to be in pain.

Sunday evening as the cow stood to eat hay from the barn feeder I was able to get close and look at her foot. I was studying and focused on the cow's foot and hoof when Donna came by. Donna asked, "What's Medora?" Apparently she thought I answered in a crabby manner when I replied, "What do you mean... what's Medora?" I thought she already knew Medora was a touristy town in North Dakota. Doesn't everyone? Hmmmm... Apparently not. I was more interested at that time with my cow and not in talking about Medora. So maybe I was crabby.

Donna thought the cow's foot was swollen at the hoof, and after looking on the internet thought it may be foot rot, which can be treated. This morning I called the cattle vet and he and an assistant came over at 2 pm as the cow was too lame to load in my stock trailer and haul over to the vet's office.

We got my cow into my head gate so we could then tie a rope around her lower leg and lift it and hold it so the vet could look at and test the hoof. The cow does not have foot rot. She appears to have sprained her shoulder or upper leg. We released the cow so the vet could observe it walk around the corral. Then the vet noticed the cow's left back leg had a problem. The lower leg had a slight swing to it as the cow walked. As we herded the cow back into the loading corral so the vet could check the leg the vet could hear a slight popping sound as the leg moved.

Once the cow was back in the loading corral the vet checked and found the leg was broken.

Yup. Broken.

Nothing we could do. The vet said he has seen some cows heal a broken leg if kept in an area where they didn't have to walk much and were allowed to mainly eat and rest. That's all I can do for now. The cow was over us poking and prodding it and before all the boards were taken down to release her from the loading corral she jumped over the bottom two boards, broken leg and all. Naturally all this activity - more walking than what she had done in days - wore her out.

If the bone heals, it will take six to eight weeks of rest. To reduce stress on the cow I am weaning her calf from her starting now. Short term - for a few days - the stress will be higher until she stops producing milk and her udder shrinks and she stops calling for her calf. Initially when I opened the gate to the calf to let her out of the corral, the calf was suspicious as she thought I was tricking her. Eventually she walked out and rejoined her friends and the herd. She was happy until later in the day when she again wanted her mother's milk.

I don't know how the cow broke her leg. My hayfield has no rocks or obstacles where she could break her leg. I suspect the leg break was during the jailbreak last Saturday evening when I was at the rodeo. I talked with the neighbors who kept the cattle in their back yard until I returned home. They said getting the cattle into their yard was orderly. Nothing in their yard looks like it would break a leg. I did learn the cattle had visited another neighbor over one more house and their apple tree. Who knows where all the cattle went and what they were up to after they left my yard, or how the people herded the cattle off the road and into the neighbor's yard. But that jailbreak resulted in:

a calf with an apple stuck in his throat,
a calf with a weeping eye from probably getting poked in its eye,
a calf with a sprained leg, and
now a cow with a broken leg.

Now if the leg doesn't heal, what happens? More problems.

The livestock auction won't take cattle if they can't walk. A slaughterhouse won't take them either. Ever since Mad Cow disease where one symptom is when cattle can't stand or walk, and undercover videos by animal rights activists showing cattle going to laughter who can't walk, the federal government banned the slaughter of cattle who cannot stand and walk, even if the cause is a broken leg.

While my cow can currently stand and barely walk, the stress of loading her and unloading her in my stock trailer would probably end her ability to walk. Apparently there are no more mobile butchers in the Valley. And if I did find a mobile butcher, the two meat processing facilities are booked. One is not taking any new cattle until February. The other a little sooner but many weeks out. They are processing the 4-H auctioned animals from the local fairs the past few weeks. And the animals already scheduled for butchering. Then it is hunting season. They don't mix processing of wild game and domestic animals. So getting someone to cut and wrap the meat right now is nigh near impossible.

And if I did find someone to cut and wrap the meat, a 7 year cow is only good for hamburger. The rough guess is the cow would produce 300 to 360 pounds of hamburger. I certainly do not have freezer space for that much meat. And while people would buy a half or quarter when the meat was steaks, roasts, jerky, hamburger and all types of meat, most people don't really want more than ten pounds of hamburger. I really don't have time to find and coordinate the sale to 30 plus people.

So, the best, and almost only, option is to wait and hope the leg heals. Otherwise I lost another cow this year.

What a terrible year this has been.

When the calf looks off in the distance is because she is watching the herd in the hayfield.