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My husband and I started ranching in
1967 with some Hereford and Angus cows. Some of the Herefords we
purchased from a neighboring ranch that raised purebreds, and
they had horns. We bought them at a reduction sale, reasonably
priced, without papers. We were not interested in raising
registered stock—just some good cattle.
One of our Hereford cows soon became
known as Hornless Fatty. She got that nickname because she was
the first of our purebreds to be dehorned. Eventually we
dehorned them all because they were just too bossy and mean to
other members of the herd. Hornless Fatty, however, had the
dubious honor of being first.
Without her horns she was a much
nicer, more docile cow, and she led a rather placid life
producing good calves (Zelda, Fergus, Figaro, to name a few).
But one winter she had a very serious accident and Figaro—the
calf she was carrying at the time—very nearly wasn’t.
Our cattle were on snowed-under
winter pasture a couple miles up the creek from our house, and
we were feeding them a few pellets and bales of hay each day. It
was mid-December and many of the cows would soon be calving. We
calved in January for 35 years, primarily because our cows are
on rugged public range in summer, where it’s hard to get them
bred efficiently. Cattle in our area always have a more
strung-out calving season when breeding in such huge mountain
pastures where the bulls may not find all the in-heat cows in a
timely manner.
One of the other reasons we
calved early was that we wanted to breed our cows selectively
(with planned matings) to our own bulls, for more genetic
improvement. So we bred them during April in 6 or 7 small
breeding groups at home, and calved in January. That way we had
a very high conception rate, knew the sire and dam of every
calf, and almost never lost a calf at birth—because in January
we had to put cows in the barn to calve (since temperatures
could be well below zero) and we were there for every birth and
could correct any problems that might occur.
Anyway, back to my story. On
Hornless Fatty’s rescue day, the kids and I went with Lynn to
help feed the cows and check on them. Our kids were young (age 2
and 4 at that time) and usually went with us in the old jeep
when we fed the cows. I generally check the cows off
individually in my little cow book, to make sure they are all
there and that I’ve seen them all, but on this particular day we
were in a bit of a hurry for some reason that I cannot now
recall, and I didn’t mark them off on my list.
I never would have realized that
Hornless Fatty was missing and in trouble, if it hadn’t been for
Joan—a cantankerous old black Angus cow. She will always be
remembered as the ornery cow who once chased my cow dog right
under my horse—only to be kicked in the face by my steadfast cow
horse. In all fairness, nasty old Joan must be given credit for
saving Hornless Fatty.
Joan was out. She had crawled
through the fence and was grazing on the steep hillside above
the road—a south-facing hill where the snow was not quite so
deep and the grass was sticking up a little better. Leaving the
kids in the jeep, I trudged up the hill in the deep snow to
bring her down and chase her back through the open gate while
Lynn was feeding the pellets. While I was up on the hill, I
could see across the trees and brush along the creek.
What I saw made my heart lurch in alarm. There was a lone red
cow over there, lying down. Something had to be terribly wrong
or she would have been with the herd, anticipating the daily
hand-out.
I chased Joan down the hill and
back into the field, and hurried to tell Lynn about the red cow
across the creek. We feared that she might be calving
prematurely—which would be disastrous because the weather was so
cold. We always tried to have the cows down at the main
ranch--with its sheds and barns--well ahead of calving time.
We left the kids in the jeep and
hurriedly hiked across the creek and through the snow-laden
bushes and found Hornless Fatty lying there—not because she was
calving, but because she couldn’t get up. She’d slipped and
fallen on some ice; the ditch above the field had not been shut
off completely. Water had been seeping past our dam at the
creek. Cold weather had created an ice flow down across the end
of the sloping field. Poor Hornless Fatty had slid all the way
down the hillside to more level ground close to the creek. We
could see her slithery path--the slide marks down the frozen,
snowed-on icy hillside. She lay there patiently and didn’t even
try to get up as we approached, having long since given up
struggling.
She’d probably been there on the
ice all night; she was very cold and shivering, and her
splayed-out hind legs were paralyzed. Even when we got her hind
legs back underneath her, by tugging and pulling and getting her
onto her side in a more comfortable position, it was no use. Her
one brief attempt to stand just sent her hind legs out from
under her again. We had to get her off the ice, quickly, or she
would continue chilling and would freeze to death. In a few
hours the sun would go down again and temperatures would drop
well below zero. We had to get her home and into the barn, but
how?
Then Lynn remembered an old hay
slip that was down in one of our lower fields. It was a wooden
platform on runners (like a raft) that we once used to drag
behind the jeep to pick up bales of hay to haul to the haystack,
when we were putting up hay in the summer. We hadn’t used it in
years. If only we could find it, under the snow!
We hurried back across the creek,
got in the jeep and drove home to search for the hay slip. We
finally found it, shoveled off the snow, and used a long metal
bar to jar and pry it loose from the frozen ground. We hitched
it behind the jeep, gathered some ropes, a halter and various
other things we might need, and headed back up the
creek—dragging the old hay slip through the snow behind us,
picking up a large pile of snow on the front of it. On our way
to the upper place we left the kids with a neighbor because our
jeep had no heater and the kids had already been out in the cold
long enough for one day.
There wasn’t a good route to the
field across the creek where the injured cow was, but our jeep
made it through the deep snow and the thick bushes, and across
the creek ice without falling through. Hornless Fatty hardly
even blinked as we made a wide circle and pulled up beside her
with the hay slip only inches away from her.
After much pushing and pulling
(quite a job, to move a 1200 pound cow), the two of us finally
managed to roll her onto the slip. We were thankful she was
placid and calm and didn’t protest or try to resist our efforts.
We arranged her paralyzed hind legs as comfortably under her as
we could, and then tied her to the slip. Lynn had brought along
a wide, flat pulley belt off our old baler, and we put this
around her shoulders like a horse’s breast collar. Then we tied
this belt down to the slip in about 6 places, on all sides, and
also tied her head to the front of the slip with the halter. Now
that she was all wrapped up like a Christmas package, we figured
she couldn’t possibly fall off the slip on the way home.
We slowly began the journey down
the field to the creek crossing. Hornless Fatty looked around in
mild surprise as she began gently sliding along over the snow on
her big sled, with the scenery moving past. Then we came to a
problem. The approach to the creek crossing was very slanted. On
the way up it, with the empty slip, we’d managed all right. But
going back down that slope, with all the weight on it, we knew
the slip would slide too far down the side of the hill and get
caught in the thick rosebriars—and might also dump poor Hornless
Fatty off as it tipped. So Lynn very daringly drove straight off
over the brink (rather than sidling), giving the jeep a burst of
speed to make sure the slip wouldn’t overtake the jeep when it
came plunging down after us.
Hornless Fatty had a brief moment
of alarm at that point. The slip balanced precariously over the
edge for a split second as the front end hung out over space.
The cow’s eyes got big as saucers. Then she and the slip
plummeted over the edge, following the roaring jeep. We made it
down to the creek crossing without a wreck and without losing
the cow. Hornless Fatty tried once to get up, rising up onto her
knees, but the baler belt held her securely and she quickly
settled back down.
We got her home, and then had to
figure out a way to get her into a barn. The best option seemed
to be an old shed with an open side. We pulled her around to the
open side, unhooked the slip from the jeep and drove the jeep
around behind the shed. Taking a board loose on the back side,
we were able to run a long chain through the wall from the jeep
to the slip. Thus we could pull the slip into the shed, unhook
it, and replace the board at the back wall.
We got her inside, rolled her off
the slip and onto some straw, and arranged her legs to make her
comfortable. There was no electricity to that shed, so we rigged
a gas heater over her, hung from the ceiling. She was very
chilled and shivering, but after several hours under the heater
she began to warm up and quit shaking.
We called our veterinarian and
discussed the situation over the phone, asking how best to take
care of her. He told us to just let her lie quietly for a couple
of days before trying to get her up. Attempting to get her on
her feet too soon might do her injured legs (torn muscles,
stretched tendons and ligaments) more harm than good. Following
his instructions, we hobbled her hind legs together with a rope,
about 12 inches apart, so she couldn’t spraddle her legs out
again if she did try to get up. We turned her over twice a day,
rolling her over, so she wouldn’t be always lying on the same
side. Cows can get bedsores from lying always in the same
position, just like people do.
We also gave her injections of
antibiotics to prevent pneumonia. The chances of aborting her
unborn calve were great, after all this stress and injury, but
she didn’t lose the baby. By the second day, she showed some
interest in food and water, so we pampered her with good hay and
grain pellets and she started drinking out of the water tub we
left close to her head.
After two days of recuperation, we got her up, with a lot of
encouraging, tail pulling, pushing and steadying. The hobbles
kept her hind legs from splaying out. She swayed very unsteadily
for a few moments, panting and grunting from the effort, then
collapsed and lay back down. But this was progress! We were
joyful. Some cows that suffer this much damage and hind leg
paralysis never get up again.
Her right hind leg was beginning
to swell, however, probably from all the damage and torn
muscles. We gave her medication prescribed by our vet to help
keep the swelling down. By now she was managing to get up and
down on her own; we’d find her lying in a different place in the
stall, or on her other side. It was a week and a half, however,
before she was able to stay on her feet for very long at a time,
and her efforts at walking were very wobbly and staggering.
As her calving time approached
(she was due to calve on January 13), we worried that she might
need assistance. But she had her calf (a big fellow we named
Figaro) without any help from us. On one of the times we went
out there to check on her, she’d already calved. Mama was almost
as wobbly as the newborn baby, but she managed to lick him and
give him his dinner. It wasn’t long before they were able to go
out with the other cows and babies.
As winter progressed into spring, Hornless Fatty regained her
strength and muscle tone, became more coordinated and less
wobbly. She was back to normal again by the time the cows went
to summer range in May, and she and Figaro were able to go with
them. By then it was impossible to tell she’d been crippled.
Seeing her happily grazing the mountainsides, with a good big
calf beside her, gave us a great feeling of satisfaction.
This story has a postscript.
Thanks to our experience rescuing Hornless Fatty, we knew what
we had to do when another cow (a 3 year old crossbred named Dayo,
pregnant with her 2nd calf) fell on the creek ice by the
waterhole in one of our lower fields and got similarly paralyzed
and stranded, 16 years later. The old hay slip was long gone,
but we nailed the side boards of an old cattle truck to a couple
of large corral poles to create a low “sled” for pulling Dayo
home. She wasn’t as placid as Hornless Fatty, however, and
protested our efforts quite vigorously.
The weather wasn’t as cold, and
we didn’t have to put her in a barn. We made a thick bed of
straw for her in one of our pens, hobbled her hind legs, turned
her several times a day, and eventually were able to get her up.
She, too, calved later without incident and raised good calves
for 12 more years. But unlike mellow Fatty, Dayo never forgave
us for the indignities she felt we imposed upon her. I think she
blamed us for all her problems. She was always a bit snorty
after that, and aggressively protective when she calved—one of
the infamous members of the herd that you always remembered to
take a weapon of some sort with you if dealing with her or her
calf at calving time.
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