Rest in peace, Sweetiebelle

Poor Sweetiebelle. 

Her health just continued to decline.  We had several people over to look her over and give us their advice on how to help her.  Most often we were told to butcher her.

The general consensus was we got snookered.  She has never been a healthy cow and we were having more problems with her.  Most people said that though she obviously had some Jersey in her we were lied to about her being a mini Jersey and she most likely was just suffering from stunted growth due to all of her health troubles.  We lacked the experience and knowledge to recognize that we bought an unhealthy cow to begin with.

We talked to a couple of vets and gave her meds and vaccinations and tried all sorts of odd home remedies that people would swear by.  Nothing worked.  Finally one day when the kids went out to do the morning chores we found her lying on her side not doing very well.  We propped her up on her brisket and did what we could for her.  We got more meds from a couple of friends, gave her lots of good food and hay and milk from our milk cow.  She seemed to perk up but we could never get her to get up.  We tried everything we could do.  She seemed cheerful and contented and not in any discomfort, but she just wouldn't get up.

Then one day she didn't want to eat very much and seemed more down than before.  It had been nearly a week now that she couldn't get up.  We knew it was time.  We borrowed a neighbor's gun and we put her down.  It was mercifully quick, but still very sad.

We feel a sense of failure over our inability to rehabilitate her.  We are sad that our hopes and dreams for her purpose for our family will never come to be.  We also feel a sense of relief that the ongoing sage that was somewhat of a drain is finally over.  We realize we need to transition from less of a pet mentality to more of a farm mentality with our animals.  We desire to be good stewards and caretakers of the animals that are in our charge and it stings to watch one just go down despite our best efforts. 

We have heard from neighbors and vets that this has been a hard winter for the cows and our next door neighbor has had 4 of his cows just go down and not get back up.  We are hoping Girlfriend and Brisket continue to do well and are eager for spring to come and put this winter behind us.  It has been a hard winter for us all.

Here is the last picture we took of her.  She looks pretty messy from lying in her own diarrhea and it being single digit temperatures made it so we can't clean her off very well.  The ropes are from our efforts to encourage her to get up and help lift her hind end.  Poor thing.  She was sweet even at the end.

Rest in peace, Sweetiebelle.