A Discouraging Discovery on Amy's Undercarriage

The day after the Jeff Davis Parish Fair and Livestock Show, there was a Jackpot Show in the same arena.  A jackpot show is one in which you pay an entry fee to participate in and then cash awards are given to winners in addition to ribbons. Since Benjamin's heifer, Amy, was already there for the Fair, we left her one additional night, paid our entry fee and Benjamin participated in the show the next morning.  Amy (and Benjamin) did great, winning Reserve Champion and second place in Showmanship.  In the process, he won back most of his entry fee!

Benjamin and Amy with ribbons

Before the show took place, we gave her a good scrubbing, clipped her with the clippers and groomed her for the show.  We aren't professionals at this by any stretch.  We do the best we can, cleaning out her ears, washing her hooves and clip meticulously around all of her body with the clippers.  The livestock shows aren't why we have livestock.  We have the dairy cows for the milk!  Having the animals also teach Benjamin responsibility and work ethic.  We work really hard on that and hope that those lessons will take root and grow!

After we got her clean, we moved her out of the barn and into the grass so that she wouldn't dirty herself by laying down in poop.  Cows really don't care where they lay.

Giving Amy a good inspection before the show

Amy is pregnant and you can tell that she is getting a little wide.  Her due date isn't until December 31st, though.  While looking her over closely, we saw something that was very concerning to me on her undercarriage - okay, on her udder.  Her teats have scabs on them!

Scabs on her teats

Here is a close up shot.  What is causing this?  

That must hurt!

I'll tell you what is causing it.  It is Clarabelle, our little Jersey heifer that is almost four months old. The scabs are caused by Clarabelle's teeth.  Once she finishes nursing on her mother, Rosie (below), while we aren't looking, she goes and begins nursing on Amy and Amy's not even in milk yet.  You would think that Amy would kick her off, but she doesn't.  Clarabelle's nursing has caused not only scab injury to Amy's teats, but also caused Amy to begin prematurely producing milk three months before she delivers her calf.

Clarabelle nursing on her mother, Rosie.  After this she must go to Amy for more...

Here is a look at Amy's bag from the back end.  This will be Amy's first calf and her udder isn't supposed to be developed that much.  You can see that the back right udder has a little milk in it.  This is worrisome in that if this goes on, it can ruin Amy.  It could cause her to lose a quarter or two.  This very thing, in fact, happened to Daisy and she only has 3 working quarters. 

So what can we do?  Well, the first thing is that we have to separate Clarabelle from the other cows and never let her get around Amy.  We'll do that by keeping Clarabelle in a partitioned section and only allow her mom (Rosie) access to her at feeding time - once a day for 15 minutes.  We'll also keep a very close eye on Amy and ensure that she doesn't get an infection in her udder and that she quickly dries up.

This is a management issue and we'll just have to do a better job of managing our little herd.  We do keep close eye on them and while we've never witnessed Clarabelle trying to nurse on Amy, she must just be sneaky.  We will just have to ensure she never gets the opportunity to do it again.  Sometimes it can be like a rodeo getting all the cows where they are supposed to be.  This will just make things a little more difficult, but it is do-able.  We'll pray that Amy is unaffected by Clarabelle's gluttony. We'll know for sure in about two and a half months.