Keeping our eyes on Rosie

We are keeping a watchful eye on Rosie as the due date for her to deliver her baby calf is November 6th.  It is always exciting for a new baby on the farm no matter how often it occurs.

Rosie's got a watchful eye on us, too!

The only problem is, we're running out of room in our little 3 acre pasture to support 3 cows in milk, 3 calves, a momma goat in milk and her little daughter, numerous chickens and a couple of turkeys.  In fact, now that we're seeing nice, cool, Fall weather, the grass isn't growing as quickly.  This means the cows will be increasingly eating more hay from here on out.  Yesterday I pulled up one of the temporary cross fences to give the cows more grass to eat.

The day before yesterday, as I surveyed the animals, something caught my eye and made me do a double-take.  I noticed that Rosie was starting to limp pretty bad.  She wasn't putting hardly any weight on her back left leg.  This is not good!  She'll be calving in perhaps 5 days or less.  I took her in the barn and put the Kow Kan't Kick device on her so she can't kick the fool out of me and then I lifted her back leg and inspected her hoof.  I was thinking that maybe she stepped on something, but her hoof and foot area was clean, without any foreign objects that could be causing the obvious tenderness to the area.

I don't want her kicking me when I lift her leg and do some 'doctoring'

So what could be the problem?  Yesterday she wasn't any better, nor this morning and it had us worried.  So as soon as our veterinarian opened today, Tricia called and scheduled a Farm Call.  Country vets are similar to old time doctors that made house calls.  Our veterinarian is located a stone's throw away from us and dropped by the house to inspect Rosie.  He told Tricia that this is very common, although we hadn't experienced it before.  Rosie's baby's position is pinching a nerve and it is making it painful and difficult for her to walk on that leg.  I would think it is similar to sciatic nerve issues that humans suffer with.  He said that the symptoms will likely continue for about a week after she calves and will then go away.  Whew!

So what's the prognosis, Doc?

So Rosie will just have to deal with the uncomfortable labor pains along with the pinched nerve condition for maybe another week until her new baby arrives.  I did search on the Internet and saw that some people had seen success by giving their cow 10 'people' aspirins mixed in their feed and that will help with the inflammation and pain.  I think I'm going to hold off on that, though. 

How much longer do I have to carry this baby

We'll keep you posted and will be eager to share baby pictures...