Our calf Pretzel’s story came to a sad conclusion this week when we had the vet out for a third visit, this time to put the calf down. Pretzel was not making any improvement in his condition or behavior, he was not gaining any weight, his twisted leg seemed to be getting worse rather than better, and our concern about his level of suffering was growing. Our hope had been that with some nutritional support to energize and fill him up, and with a splint on his leg to straighten out the tendons and joints that had been twisted in utero, that Pretzel could catch on to life and start taking strides under his own power. This was just not happening, and we grew more and more worried about tube feeding him for every meal that he was getting, and about how much suffering he was enduring. In situations like this, we have to weigh an animal’s suffering against the hope that they will be able to return to something of a self-sufficient life among their herd or flock-mates, recognizing that providing an elevated level of care continuously is just not sustainable or responsible in a production farm setting. In Pretzel’s case, after more than two weeks of pretty intense care, it became pretty clear that the scales were not tipping in the right direction, and that the humane choice was to end his suffering. The vet first sedated Pretzel, then administered an overwhelming dose of medication through an IV which quickly stopped the calf’s heart. Because of the presence of these chemicals in the calf, his body had to be buried.
Pretzel’s mother Pickle had seemed concerned about her calf all along, and she does not seem much surprised that he is gone. Though her milk production did dip a bit this week after Pretzel disappeared, she has continued putting lots of milk in the can twice per day, and we were able to accomplish our first bottled milk distribution this week. Thirty half gallon jugs of pasteurized milk went into the delivery van on Thursday for distribution, along with eggs and veggies, in our Mission Hill School food support project. This step was a long time coming for us, and finally putting the bottler to use in filling milk jugs, putting labels on the jugs, loading them into milk crates, and all of the other little nuts and bolts needed to make it work, was really gratifying. I hope that we can increase production, bottling and distribution in the coming weeks and months, and start sending milk to our local community meals and the Orange Food Pantry as well. This bottled milk will also be used in our kitchen and dining room when over-night programing resumes, so there will be plenty of demand if the cows can keep up with the supply.
I have mentioned before that our dairy pastures are being overrun by Bedstraw (Galium Mullugo L.), and this situation has certainly progressed along the same path this growing season. The dominion of this plant, relatively new on the scene here in North Orange, is ever expanding and strengthening all over our dairy farm acreage. However, with the purchase of a smaller used brush-hog, and the repair of the PTO mechanism on our smaller tractor, we have undertaken an effort to clip the dairy paddock after the herd grazes them, in an effort to fight back. So after the cows have been moved to the next paddock, I zip into the one they’ve just finished, set the brush-hog at six or eight inches off the ground, and do my best to clip the tops off of every remaining plant that the cows left behind. I follow this with some targeted weed-whacking under the fence lines and in the corners, to get anything the tractor missed. Our hope is that if we can keep the Bedstraw from going to seed we can slow its spread, and that by promoting the plants that we want in our pastures through annual seeding, we might be able to beat back this rising tide. Bedstraw goes to seed earlier than anything else in the pasture, and makes more seed than anything else, so it has some advantages that we are trying to even out a bit. The plant is actually quite high in protein, and can be a good forage for animals that have learned to get past it’s bitter taste, but we are trying to avoid the development of a mono-culture of Bedstraw in our fields. So far the clipping has been accomplished as we’d hoped, but we’ll have to observe this whole growing season, and next, to see if our plans are having any effect.
Garden beds in the home garden and the long rows in the Flat Field are quickly filling with little veggie starts as the weather warms and we move things from the greenhouse to their homes in the soil. With the fruit trees all over the farm in full blossom, and pollinators swarming thickly around them in their annual buzzing frenzy, we seem to be stepping out of the cool damp of spring into a much more summery time of year. The first two weeks of May have been unseasonably cold and windy, with dawn temperatures still down in the thirties most mornings last week, but things seem to be trending warmer and warmer. The Mayflies, put off by the cold weather, finally made the scene in all of their horrible glory this week, and they certainly know when the weather is warm enough to begin their annual invasion. The ten-day forecast shows some day-time temperatures around eighty-five next week, and some nights in the sixties, so it appears that summer is on its way. My yearly panic about the rain; when it fell last, when it will fall again, and how much, has now begun in earnest, and I can report that there does not appear to be much hope in the ten-day forecast, but that the five inches we got over the first two weeks of May is keeping my mind at ease for now.
The Farm School Manual 