Well today I am officially back to work every day. I am challenged with our new name – I would like to say EARS, but we are now OCRC – Emo. That isn’t nearly as catchy or easy. I would have liked to have had a better sleep but that wasn’t in the cards. When doing chores last evening I found a calf with a nasty belly ache. How do you know they have a belly ache? They are obvious. They literally roll around in pain and kick at their side.
I was able to get it in the calf pen and ran to the house for medicine. I gave her two needles and some gas relief medicine. I have seen worse, but the fear is always, is this just a pain or is something twisted inside? After some struggles I was able to get her and her mother in so that I could monitor them closely through the night and keep her from laying in one spot too long, struggling. Lucky that my Vet lives next door as she ran over and looked and listened! She felt I have given her all the right drugs, but it was a wait and see kind of thing.
I spent most of the night checking on her and I did see improvement each time though I was nervous about getting too overconfident. This morning it seems as though she is feeling well. I will keep them close to be sure. The weather changes and the wind are not great for calves. So, you work hard to get them on the ground safely, but it certainly doesn’t end there. I also believe that some years are just more challenging, and it seems that I might be having one of those years. Then on top of that, my internet has been dropping suddenly and for the most part I have decent service. After some talking, we thought perhaps it was my router giving me some issues. I had my mom pick one up while she was in town. That was the easy part. Now I have no barn cameras and the steps to get them working again is way over my head.
Thankfully I do have them hardwired to one television in my house but that don’t help my mom, who likes to check on things from her house!
Crossing my fingers, I will get some help with this soon. I am sure you all know this but working on things likes this really gobbles up time and I don’t have a lot of time to waste these days!
I was sad to hear that we were moving back into the red zone. I think we are all disappointed that we are not moving forward. I hope everyone continues to be smart and take precautions. If you can get vaccinated – do it! We were just making plans to organize our 4-H Beef Clubs. We will be on hold for a bit but on that note, we need Beef Leaders! We are aiming to keep our club size small due to restrictions. If you are interested, please reach out. We really hate to see kids turned away but in reality that could happen!
