After yesterday’s day of calm, today was anything but… It began with Jack discovering that Onion had badly torn her ear and ended with an out-of-hours visit by the vet to attend a poorly Thyme (pictured back on Saturday and looking a picture of health!).
We noticed Thyme was not looking great at the evening feed when she slightly wobbled her way up to the top of the field towards the feed bucket. She ate okay but her walking was definitely off-kilter! The first thought was staggers, which is a magnesium deficiency usually caused by the cow eating a lot of lush grass. Magnesium is not a mineral that can be stored in the body and so it needs to be provided through the cow’s diet. The problem with fresh grass is that it is very low in magnesium, it also passes through the cow’s digestive tract quickly, and so doesn’t give the system enough time to digest what little magnesium there is. Spring is a classic time for staggers when cows are turned out onto fresh pasture after a winter of being indoors and/or on dry forage. A cow suffering with staggers will act a little drunk, be restless and/or overexcited and when severe, will fall down and not be able to move. If magnesium is not given quickly enough within 24 hours of the onset of these symptoms, the cow can die!!
Rachel from Market Vets came out and after initially looking at Thyme’s walking, agreed we may be looking at the early stages of staggers. Then, after Thyme tried to run (to keep up with the others who in turn were keeping up with Parsley’s manic calf), we decided that what we were seeing may be more of a limp as well as general unsteadiness. Our next task was to restrain Thyme so that Rachel could properly examine her and if necessary either get some magnesium into her or other drugs, depending on what was found.
We decided to get all the cows into the field shelter and get a halter on Thyme and then tie her to one of the post rings. Easy!! Except, despite having a food jug being rattled at them, the cows decided this was not THEIR plan at all and they took off down the paddock. The fact there were three people in their field was almost definitely spooking them...
Plan b was to take advantage of the fact all five of them began to head up to the gate into the 4-acre and down to good luck and planning, it so happened we had a stack of hurdles there which we quietly but quickly used to then pen them in. These were only sheep hurdles mind you so it was no surprise when a panicked Parsley (whose calf was the other side) leapt over them. Fortunately this slightly distracted Thyme, just enough so that David could get the halter on her and then tied to the gate post! She was now reasonably secure, although not at all happy.
Rachel took her temperature which was elevated a little more than she would have liked, checked her foot and ran her hands over her body. Nothing obvious stood out although we did find a few lumps under the skin in her neck which may have been a reaction to something in one of the hedgerows maybe!! Staggers was looking less likely but in the end, with a raised temperature and the lameness/wobbliness, Rachel felt some anti-inflammatories, antibiotics AND some magnesium were the order of the day!!
Three needles later, we loosened the harness and let a very annoyed Thyme back out with the others. Our hope is that the drugs get to work and whatever the problem is, it will now disappear!
By now it was virtually dark but before being able to head back inside, there was the small matter of that torn ear to attend to….