A Month on the Farm

by Lisa Buchanan

~ April ~

The Black Ven approach to life is that the glass is always half full, but sometimes it seems as if someone is dipping the glass over!

Our calving has deteriorated badly since last month. We have had two abortions, a calf born with a gut deformity which was horrendous as it died in agony, and then a still born.

At that point, I asked the vet to arrange a postmortem to find out if there was something going on. And we had the terrible news that some of the girls had been infected by the Bluetongue virus, which is midge-born and comes originally from Africa and Europe, but thanks to climate change is now here.

What is most depressing is that we took the trouble to vaccinate against it last year as soon as the vaccine become available, but it appears this was too late. The damage had been done. We have had the Government’s Animal and Plant Health Agency on the farm blood testing all the animals, which was a Herculean task, but with Jamie, Leighton and me we got through it in five and a half hours. The implications are complicated and I won’t bother to explain them here. Suffice to say, we could still have problems with those who haven’t yet calved.

And on top o all this, two of our cows threw their calf beds out a few hours after calving. This is when the cow keeps pushing and out comes the whole uterus,. Pushing it back in requires the vet and great skill. The chances of death are very high because the ovary can become detached and they bleed to death. The first one we got back in relatively smoothly and the cow was feeling better in a couple of days. The other one was much worse. It happened throughout one night abd no sooner had we got it in, she pushed it back out and through stitches, which was even more awful. She was so pale we were quite sure she was dying., Her breathing was dreadful. But to everyone’s delight and surprise, not least for her little calf, she made it. Her back end is a mess, but she is well again. That truly was a miracle and testament to a wonderful young vet from Fairfield House and Leighton. So there, the glass is half full again (except we cannot breed from either cow again, which is a real blow).

And despite all these horrors, the calves we do have are beautiful and strong. The sun is shining. The grass is growing. And the daffodils are magnificent. My father always called March the ‘yellow month’, and it truly is.

It won’t be long before the girls are out again on the grass, known to all farmers as Dr Green - Nature puts everything right again! Here’s hoping! ….