Our Poor Cow!

We have had a certain cow and her calf for a year, and until this week I had never seen them. This was the cow that was so pregnant she couldn't walk all the way to our place, so we left her in the care of a friend, whose property was near where she decided to stop walking. I originally shared the story here.

It's not uncommon around here for people to keep other people's cattle on their property. We have a neighbor's bull hanging with our cows on our place pretty much year around, except when the neighbor occasionally moves the whole group to his property (usually during the dry season, to try to keep the cows where there is the most grass). Our cow and her calf stayed all year on our friend's property, where she had given birth. Since the friend had his own herd of cows, ours were no extra trouble.

Recently, however, our friend decided to sell his entire herd, so we needed to collect our cows. Unbeknownst to us, however, our adult cow was in dreadful condition! She had recently become horribly skinny, and would probably not have lasted much longer if we'd not gotten her back when we did. We're not sure why she's doing so poorly, as her calf is beautifully healthy.

Now she's here, and we're feeding her three meals a day, plus she has access to grass between the meals (and we're treating her for parasites). Allen says she looks stronger already (we've had her for two days now), and Ben says she looks a tiny bit fatter. Her trip here was rough (we had to tie her down in our trailer, and the road is really rough), so just recuperating from the travel is a big deal.

Here she is, poor thing, looking like a bag of bones:



And here is her pretty little calf:





The same day Allen and Russell brought home the cow and calf, they also purchased three more little piglets and brought them home! Five new animals in one day is a big deal around here! I'll show some pictures of the piglets in a future post.

The largest of the new piglets belongs to Russell, but it will live here with our pigs. I'm glad we're having the opportunity to fatten up a pig for Russell, as Russell is always helping us out with the cows and dogs and such. I know when butchering time comes Russell will be here to assist with that, as well.

Oh, just for fun, here's a picture of our guest, Katie. I know her mom will appreciate seeing her enjoying a bit of puppy playtime.