Rescue Journal

ok..i have my tea...wanna hear what the animals are doing?

Carol  ·  Feb. 6, 2010

on her last walk last night, doris was absolutely roaring around for her. she was trotting here, over there, back again at fast for doris speed...she was FUNNY. now you would have to know doris to know that doris is never intentionally funny...she is a very royal and serious little thing...."you there!...feed me...walk me...take me out to pee..." she does not ever hurry , it is not in her vocabulary. she made me laugh.

kodi-bear is not happy in my bedroom. he is sulking again and he still has diarrhea. he is again plastered up against the door, only this time it is my door. and he is so stubborn and refusing to move that he had his bout of runny poop all over the doorway and still decided he was laying there. so there i am at midnight trying to mop over and under a runny poop, stubbornly immobile and sulking, cattle dog...it was an exercise in patience in the extreme.

max and mandy are somewhat more relaxed in the other part of the house...the cats certainly like them better than that busy kodi-bear.

the vet came yesterday to see gilbert and his ongoing saga with periodic foot rot. she said we are never going to get completely rid of it, it is too long term and chronic for him. we will just have to medically manage it for the rest of his life...ok that sucks...i was hoping for a long term cure.

while she was here, she happened to see emily our sweetest and most beautiful calf...sucking away on joy. she checked joy and no joy is not lactating...she just lets that spoiled little girl suck away cuz she wants to.
apparently this is not a good thing...the continual sucking without any milk production may irritate joy's teats and give her mastitis. (you learn something new about cows every day)...anyway her 2 possible solutions were to keep emily away from joy for 2 or 3 weeks...i was not fond of that one. that would upset emily, joy and percy and i do like our cows upset.

her second solution was to insert a plastic nose ring in emily (that's gotta hurt!)...it has little spikey things on it so when emily tries to nurse, it hurts joy so she kicks emily to make her stop...ok..i like that solution even less. poor em, she gets a honking big plastic spikey ring pierced thru her nose AND she gets kicked by her not real mom because she loves to suck on her... poor joy, forced to kick the little calf that you love because the plastic spikey thing in her nose hurts when it touches you....that solution royally sucks!
i have always believed with thumb sucking human children, that they will eventually stop..whoever saw a college kid sucking his thumb? it just doesn't happen. so i thought baby cows would do the same, stop when they were ready...have you seen a giant cow nursing on another? well the vet says they can.

hmmm..thinking again. i want to talk to my old farmer friends...maybe there is some nasty tasting but safe "stop baby cows from sucking on other cows teats" cream to put on joy.

the things you have to figure out kindly in rescue is MIND BOGGLING!

ok...done my tea and i have to go pick up some bales of straw this morning to make the barn guys beds better.

Comments

hornblower

I'm a HUMAN IBCLC - International Board Certified Lactation Consultant.

I don't know a whole lot about cows specifically, but I do know a lot about mammallian milk production.

Mammals can and sometimes do lactate sponteneously, without a previous pregnancy. Some cows breeds have been bred for this ability to keep on lactating after only one birth or no birth at all. IIRC there are some goats that do this too.

In humans, lactation for adopted babies is now usually induced with hormonal treatment (to simulate a pregnancy & birth) BUT for many women, nipple stimulation is all that's needed to bring on a milk supply & this is how it was done in the past.

In humans, nursing on a dry nipple does not cause mastitis; this is highly unlikely, unless the latch was SO awful that the nipple was a bloody mess - usually the animal with the nipples would protest about this bhvr continuing because it would be excrutiatingly painful.

It is my view that natural lactation in humans is very poorly understood. In DAIRY animals it is even less understood because it is only viewed through our "articial milk factory" eyeglasses which skews our understanding of what is and isn't normal.

If this were a human dyad, unless there was trauma to the nipple, I'd say there is no physical risk to this bhvr continuing. I would also say that there are substantial benefits to it.

Janice

Can't you use bag balm? Can't imagine any body liking the taste of that and its medicated.

erin

carol i was your canadian tire money fairy this morn, forgot to mention it earlier, left it by your comp. i think youd get alot more of it if can tire wasnt so anal about giving the fake money back if you want to return something...