Saturday 17th March 2018
A limping Thyme
Yesterday Thyme was limping and with horror, we saw that she had a long horizontal split across the top of the outer nail on her left front foot. Why her nail has split was a bit of a mystery at first but what we think may have happened is that her foot has become too wet (through walking on the soggy woodchip) and therefore soft and as such has been more easily damaged.
Cows' hooves grow all the time, just as our nails do, and for cows this usually means a once a year trim. Last summer when their feet were done the foot trimmer declared them to be in good shape. We can see now this is not quite the case!!! Both Thyme and Parsley's hooves are a bit raised in places, suggesting uneven growth.
Annie from Market Vets came out and between us we gave Thyme some anti-inflammatory for the pain and anti-biotics to keep away any nasty infection.
Her advice was then simple: keep Thyme out of the wet!!!
We shut all 4 cows inside their shed once the vet had gone but in the afternoon we decided that it is not really big enough to house all four of them inside 24/7!!! It satisfies Soil Association guidelines which state that housed cows of up to 350KG need 7 square meters each but for us, this seems a pretty small space.
At feeding time we thus moved the cows to the barn as it gives them more space than they have in the Woodchip Pad shed (over ten square meters each), although obviously not as much as they have including the Pad itself. But the need to keep Thyme's feed dry means the barn is a much better option. With the goats now choosing to sleep in their shelter each night, we had the added bonus of not feeling too badly about not giving them access to the barn as well!
It only took us around an hour to 'cow proof' the barn. Fortunately all the gates and partitions were fine but we had to put in bigger hay racks and remove the licks and we then topped up with more straw.
Getting them in was a doddle, poor Thyme limped a bit still but the yellow feed bucket worked its magic and rather than running off into the 4-acre field, they just followed us down towards the gate into the barn. David had rigged up a short stretch of rope just to help keep them on the straight and narrow but we might have got away without it.
Once inside they had a mad ten minutes racing around before settling down to munch straw and hay!! As the photo shows, they seem happy enough!!! Jack had to confess that the mucking out will probably be a lot easier as there will be no mats to sweep and no woodchip to poo pick up on and then rake.. Having the cows in the barn like this is a good dummy run for next winter when, if it is this wet again, we may consider putting them in the new posh 'lean-to' side and not using the Woodchip Pad at all!!!
Cows' hooves grow all the time, just as our nails do, and for cows this usually means a once a year trim. Last summer when their feet were done the foot trimmer declared them to be in good shape. We can see now this is not quite the case!!! Both Thyme and Parsley's hooves are a bit raised in places, suggesting uneven growth.
We shut all 4 cows inside their shed once the vet had gone but in the afternoon we decided that it is not really big enough to house all four of them inside 24/7!!! It satisfies Soil Association guidelines which state that housed cows of up to 350KG need 7 square meters each but for us, this seems a pretty small space.
At feeding time we thus moved the cows to the barn as it gives them more space than they have in the Woodchip Pad shed (over ten square meters each), although obviously not as much as they have including the Pad itself. But the need to keep Thyme's feed dry means the barn is a much better option. With the goats now choosing to sleep in their shelter each night, we had the added bonus of not feeling too badly about not giving them access to the barn as well!
It only took us around an hour to 'cow proof' the barn. Fortunately all the gates and partitions were fine but we had to put in bigger hay racks and remove the licks and we then topped up with more straw.
Getting them in was a doddle, poor Thyme limped a bit still but the yellow feed bucket worked its magic and rather than running off into the 4-acre field, they just followed us down towards the gate into the barn. David had rigged up a short stretch of rope just to help keep them on the straight and narrow but we might have got away without it.
Once inside they had a mad ten minutes racing around before settling down to munch straw and hay!! As the photo shows, they seem happy enough!!! Jack had to confess that the mucking out will probably be a lot easier as there will be no mats to sweep and no woodchip to poo pick up on and then rake.. Having the cows in the barn like this is a good dummy run for next winter when, if it is this wet again, we may consider putting them in the new posh 'lean-to' side and not using the Woodchip Pad at all!!!