I found #38 lying on his side on Thursday afternoon. He was stretched out, arched back, and obviously in a lot of pain. I called the vet and was able to sneak in a quick visit before they had to close.
The calf was already hypothermic. There wasn’t any obvious signs of disease or injury, so the vet suspected, because it was acute, that the calf was stepped on or kicked, and it caused some internal damage.
The vet offered to put the calf on an IV and try to warm him up, but the prognosis was bad. I took the calf home, put him in a warm bath to try and warm him up, see if he could stand and possibly feed him some milk if he was up for it. The calf by now was limp, but when he went in the water he mooed. After a while I took him out of the water and laid him on a blanket in front of the fireplace. I put an electric blanket on him. He mooed only a few more times.
Eventually I went to bed and when I woke up the next morning, the calf was mostly unresponsive but breathing. I decided that he wasn’t going to survive, so it was better to die with his mama than in an unfamiliar environment. So I took him to the field, laid him down on a clean spot of ground, and brought his mama to him.
One of the things that surprises me is how social and compassionate cows seem to be. The mama was obviously in distress. She mooed a few times as she realized her calf was dying or already dead. Blue came by to comfort the mama. A few moments later the calf stopped breathing.
I came back that afternoon and loaded the calf up in the back of my side-by-side. The plan was to save the hide and feed the rest of him to the dogs. It was cold that night so I was in no rush to get it done.
The next morning I was able to skin over half of the calf, but my hand started cramping. I didn’t have a place to store the calf as it was going to be warm that day. I decided to just dump the carcass near the dogs and let them decide what they wanted to do with it.
It’s sad when an animal dies, particularly when you don’t know exactly why it died or what you could do differently. Death is, however, a part of life.
I believe in the resurrection through Jesus Christ, and that heaven will be filled with the animals that lived on this earth. Perhaps I will get to meet #38 again. He was a beautiful bull calf that didn’t deserve what he got.