Update on Little Orphaned Anna

Many readers have asked how things are going with little orphaned Anna, whose mother Polly died last Sunday. If there is a shortage of photos with this blog post, it's because things have been somewhat of a rodeo around here and taking pictures was not a priority.

Anna was born on March 2. This puts her at about seven weeks old, far too young to lose her mama -- or her mama's milk.

Therefore our priority was to get Anna to take a bottle. We mixed up calf milk replacer (formula) and heated it to the right temperature, and poured it into a calf bottle.

Then we got Anna into a small pen, put a rope around her neck, pushed her against the wall (which takes the "fight" out of a cow), and tried to get her to drink.

We tried and tried and tried. We massaged her jaw and throat; we held the bottle at different angles; we squeezed milk into her mouth (not enough to choke her, of course). It wasn't that Anna was necessarily fighting us; it's just that she wouldn't drink, no matter how long the nipple was in her mouth. After ten or fifteen minutes' of trying, we would get maybe -- maybe -- two or three ounces down her. We tried this five or six times throughout the day, same results.

Okay, time to rethink.

Anna wasn't alone in the corral. We also had Amy (Matilda's adult calf) and Amy's little unnamed bull calf in there as well. Our last hope was Amy.

Monday night we separated Amy from the two calves, which were tucked into a small pen. This added an additional noise level to our farm. Now it wasn't just Anna bawling; it was also Amy's calf, indignant at being separated from his mama; and Amy herself set up a lot of bellowing. Suffice it to say no one got a good night's sleep.

Yesterday morning Don got up early and we got Amy into the squeeze chute and tried, for the first time, to milk her. Considering she was agitated and annoyed at being separated from her calf and stressed from being in the unfamiliar squeeze chute, she did splendidly. I milked out just a little over a quart, not bad for a first-time milking.

We returned Amy to the barn, released her calf to her, strained the fresh warm milk, and poured it into the bottle. Then once again we tried to get Anna to nurse.

"Come on, little baby, this isn't formula, this is fresh milk," we told her, but she would have none of it.

Frustrated, we released her out of the pen -- and she dove, literally dove, for Amy's udder. She began nursing like there was no tomorrow.

Now lest you think this option hadn't occurred to us earlier, we should point out that Amy hasn't been overly kind to little orphaned Anna. She tends to shove the little brat away whenever she notices her. Therefore we coudn't depend on Amy's uncomplaining cooperation when it came to letting Anna nurse.

But we discovered something yesterday -- when Amy's own calf is nursing, she doesn't really care if there's an extra calf back there. And Anna, canny lass that she is, always positions herself in the very back, as far away from Amy's line of sight as possible.

So we devised a new strategy, and so far it seems to be working. At night we separate the calves (this morning all was quiet in the barn until 5:45 am and I slept like a rock). In the morning I milk Amy. Then I lead her back into the barn, release the calves, and hold Amy's lead rope so she'll stand still, so as to allow both calves to take as much milk as they want and need.

Then we release Amy out of the corral to join her herd-mates and graze on the very small amount of fresh grass that's finally starting to grow. The calves stay in the corral, where they have food, water, shade, and shelter.

(Amy's unnamed bull calf on the left, Anna on the right.)

Once or twice during the day, we go get Amy and return her to the corral, where the calves attack her avidly, then we put her back outside.

In the evening, we fetch Amy again, and let the calves nurse on her while holding her lead rope.

Then we let her loose in the corral with the calves, where everyone settles in with their dinner. Just before dark, we put the calves into the small pen for the night.

So far so good.

Despite her occasional aggression -- more like annoyance -- toward Anna, dear Amy has been an absolute trooper. It's asking a lot of her -- nursing two calves as well as being milked in the morning for us, but her body and milk production will adjust.

Nonetheless we're going to start graining Amy, something we haven't done for any of our cows in years. We'll also watch her health -- if she gets too skinny, we'll stop the morning milking and just let her nurse the two calves.

This schedule will severely restrict our movements away from home for the next few months, but needs must when the devil drives. We're just so -- SO! -- grateful Amy was in the wings, ready to rescue little orphaned Anna from the loss of her dear mother.

Such is life on a farm.

Little orphaned Anna

We lost Polly, our Jersey cow, yesterday afternoon.

Her death was completely unexpected. After looking so ill last week, she seemed completely recovered after receiving antibiotics. She was eating, chewing her cud, nursing her calf.

And then boom, she was down, dead before we knew it. Don removed her halter. After all, she won't be needing it anymore.

A kind neighbor brought his backhoe and dug her grave.

But unlike when Matilda died – taking her unborn calf with her – Polly leaves behind little Anna, less than two months old and far from being weaned. And Polly was my last trained milker.

However Amy (Matilda’s daughter) offers hope. She’s not trained to milk, but she’s lead-trained. She’s also – like Matilda – something of a “universal donor.” So yesterday afternoon we experimentally led Amy into the squeeze chute and I got some milk from her udder without a problem. By “some,” I mean a single squirt from all four teats. Since she’s actively nursing her own little calf, it's not like she’s walking around with a full bag waiting for me to milk her. For that to happen, we need to separate her from her calf at night. But at least she wasn’t fighting me trying to milk her. Amy has a sweet, gentle disposition, just like her mama did.

The squeeze chute was missing a bottom (the boards were rotted when we got it)...

...so Don cut two sheets of OSB and we slid those into position.

We ended up putting Amy, Amy's calf, and little orphaned Anna into the corral together.

We had hopes Anna would willingly nurse off of Amy, but the grieving baby doesn’t seem inclined to do so, even though she's undoubtedly hungry. Instead, so far she has spent the entire evening and night lowing pitifully for her mother. It's heartbreaking.

We always keep calf milk replacer on hand, so today we’ll bottle-feed Anna. She’s not going to take that indignity lying down, so it will be a bit of a rodeo until she understands what we’re trying to do, but at her young age there’s no possible way she can get sufficient nutrition from solid foods.

We’ll also start separating Amy from the two calves at night, and I’ll milk her in the mornings, with all the milk going to Anna (fresh milk is always better than milk replacement).

In the meantime, we’re all mourning Polly’s loss. Matilda and Polly, our two beloved Jerseys. Sometime farm life isn’t much fun.

Another tangible investment

For some time now, I've been urging people to consider tangible investments rather than intangible investments. Fiat currency and all the investment portfolios in the world are subject to endless economic tweaking that could leave their real worth far less than you think.

To that end, Don and I have always tried to think in terms of what would make our homestead more efficient and productive. Anything that fills these qualifications are, we feel, a worthwhile investment.

This past week we had to have a vet come to dehorn a four-month-old calf, give her brucellosis and tuberculosis tests, and get all her shots up to date in order to sell her. As expected, it was a physical nightmare because let me tell you, a four-month-old calf has a LOT of kick in her. I was almost nauseous with dread as the vet visit approached, knowing what kind of rodeo I could expect. Then there was the follow-up vet visit to check the tuberculosis test, which necessitated catching her once again. In short, it was a lot of hard work. Hard, and potentially dangerous. A stray hoof could kick us in the gut or the head and do a fair bit of damage. And this was a calf, not a full-grown cow.

Don and I are getting too old for this. That was our conclusion.

Yet we are determined to remain in this homesteading lifestyle, so we had to come up with a way to continue that won't threaten us with physical injury. The solution? A squeeze chute.

A squeeze chute is something we've needed for a long, long, long time... but the price has always put us off. Good squeeze chutes can run anywhere from $3000 to $7000, depending on how many bells and whistles they have. But after this past week's multiple rodeos, Don got on Craig's List and started searching out any possibilities.

And oh my, he hit the jackpot.

$950 is an awful lot of money for us, but we justified it two ways. One, if we're going to buy a big-ticket item, this is literally the only time of year we can do so, when we have a shot of income from the busy season for our woodcraft business. And two, the cost of a squeeze chute is ultimately cheaper than the cost of hospital bills from a concussion or bruised internal organs while trying to wrestle with a recalcitrant animal; or of additional vet costs for an injured animal.

Besides, this chute is far less expensive than anything else we could find. Don drove out on Wednesday and inspected it from top to bottom and found it's in superb condition, with the exception of some rotted-out wooden floor boards (which are easy to replace). Don paid the man on the spot so no one else would snap up this bargain.

So yesterday morning despite the pelting rain, we borrowed a neighbor's trailer and drove to the farm where the squeeze chute was located. It was about an hour's drive away, further into the mountains. Lovely location.

The seller didn't have all his firewood in yet, but he had a good start.

The seller was originally from Austria (he sounded exactly like Arnold Schwartzenager) and was retiring from raising beefalo. Beefalo are a cross between bisen and beef cattle, and apparently the meat is superb. However the animals are powerful and testy, far more wild than cattle, so needless to say a sturdy squeeze chute was essential. I figured if this chute could handle beefalo, it certainly can handle Dexters!

(Can you see the rain pelting on the pond?)

The seller already had the chute chained up to a track hoe, ready to load.

He lifted the unit and placed it on the trailer...

...then carefully nudged it until it was balanced in the middle. Then Don strapped it down for the trip home.

Before leaving, the seller showed us some other equipment he had for sale -- a sidebar mower, a plow blade, some balers, etc. There was an impressive yellow-jacket nest inside one of the balers.

That's a solid nest down in the bottom of this roll of baling twine. Good thing the weather was chilly and the insects were sluggish, or I sure as heck wouldn't be photographing them this closely!

The seller told us something about the sheer strength of the beefalo, and the damage they could do to intrastructure. For example they easily bent this sturdy tube gate.

More flimsy barriers such as this pressed metal gate...

...are often reduced to metal matchsticks.

I decided that no matter HOW fabulous the meat might be, I had no interest in raising something as powerful and half-wild as a beefalo. I like my Dexters and Jerseys.

We drove home with our new treasure... pardon me, investment... and parked it until a neighbor can come over with his beefy tractor to unload it.

Isn't that a pretty sight?

We still have a lot to do before the squeeze chute is usable. We need to build a run to funnel the animals into it. The run will be in a Y-shape, one branch of which will lead to the chute and the other of which will lead to a loading ramp for a livestock trailer. But the squeeze chute is the key to making life on our homestead a lot less dangerous and stressful, both for us and for the livestock.

In short, we'd rather have $950 put into a squeeze chute, than $950 sitting in the bank where it's subject to inflation or even government seizure.

Yes, tangible investments. Good idea.