Farm Fresh Blog

The thing about raising livestock is that your plans for the day can change at a moment's notice.  Yesterday Other Half and I were finishing up watering sheep when his phone rang . . .  

and our plans for the day changed . . .  because $11,000 worth of show cattle were dead.

While these weren't our cattle, they belonged to a friend down the road and he needed help. So we climbed in the truck and raced across the bayou. It was bad.  It was really bad.

On the surface it appeared to be a problem with the feed. All died within minutes of eating. One died with her head still in the bucket.

Thus began the phone calls and the cold, hard reality of getting two heifers buried and a dead bull loaded onto a flatbed trailer for a trip to the state veterinary university for testing.

And all this had to be done before his daughter came home from school.  They were her cattle, her hopes, her dreams. The little brahma heifer was her baby.

The well-digger across the street came and dug a gigantic hole in the pasture. Son brought our flatbed trailer over to load the bull.  And as the school bus stopped in front of the house, tears welled up in my eyes, for the hardest part of the day was about to begin.