Em Nau Farm BLOG

Since my jottings in February we have had another couple hundred millimetres of rain to help keep the dust down.  This has lead to H and I having to spend most weekends shovelling gravel on the drive way to rebuild it – we have another couple of week-ends to go to complete this task.

We also lost Ruby (the first calf born on the property since we took over) to either a snake bite or to a disease called “black-leg” (is a highly fatal disease of young cattle caused by the spore forming, rod shaped, gas producing bacteria Clostridium chauvoei ).

Latte, Ruby’s mum, had been bellowing for a couple of days whilst we were doing the driveway but we could still see Ruby close by so we assumed it was the rain that was causing Latte’s distress.  On the 26^th of Feb Latte was standing in the one spot calling and then looking down the hill towards the creek.  H and I were preoccupied doing the driveway and put the calling down to Ruby being out of Latte’s sight.  On the Wednesday (27^th) when H was doing the morning milking/chook feeding she noticed that Latte had a full udder and Ruby was nowhere to be seen, so walked towards Latte.  Latte lead H down to where Ruby lay dead (in the spot that Latte had been looking when she was calling the previous day).  H figures Ruby hadn’t been gone very long as there was little fly activity and her eyes still seemed clear.

If it was Black-leg we wouldn’t have been able to save her anyway as the disease is a very quick killer of young calves (The animal usually dies in 12 to 48 hours.  In most cases the animal is found dead without being previously observed sick.  The speed with which blackleg kills usually makes individual treatment useless). 

Other than the rain and losing Ruby things have been going along pretty well.  Most of the does, it appears, are in kid, some have even dried off milking.  The chooks are starting to lay again (we are also letting them free-range in the afternoons) after getting a crop full of grass each day.

Until next time enjoy your dash