About a week ago my Jersey cow Maple finally birthed her calf. A beautiful little brown heifer calf. I could see that she was laboring so I stuck her in the milk barn by herself. By evening it was clear she was working hard. The calves feet had been poking thru for the last hour but no progress had been made. So I helped pull the calf out and within 10 minutes all was good. A strong healthy baby and a happy mother. Usually that’s the end of it. But as the evening went on it was clear that Maple had a mild form of milk fever.
When a cow has her calf and starts producing milk, there is a heavy demand for calcium. Sometimes a cow has trouble mobilizing enough calcium from her body and she starts to go down.
The cow will get weak, her ears will get icy cold, and eventually she will die if not treated. The good thing is that milk fever is super easy to identify and treat. Subcutaneous injections of calcium gluconate usually fix the problem and the cow will be back to normal in no time.
The problem I had was that I didn’t have any calcium on hand. I knew that milk fever could be a problem, I know how to treat it, but I wasn’t prepared for it by being stocked up with some extra supplies. With everything else happening on the farm I just hadn’t thought about it.
So it’s 9pm, I have a sick cow, and all the stores are closed at that point. Maple was doing ok so I opted to wait till morning. I had to head to work at 4 am but I could call a vet then and get her treated.
At 4 am she was still ok, just a little weak. By the time my wife checked on her a little later Maple was starting to go down and a problem I was running into was I couldn’t get a vet out. Because I rarely ever need a vet, none of them wanted to deal with me. My cow was dying for lack of a $5 bottle of calcium and I couldn’t get one vet to stop by the farm and I was hours away at that point ( I drive truck).
Thankfully my neighbor is a semiretired dairy farmer with plenty of old time wisdom and experience.
He gladly came over, dosed Maple up with a full bottle of calcium and offered to help out again if needed. By late afternoon Maple was back up on her feet and doing well. All was good.
It’s funny how nothing ever happens to the people who “prep”. They look ahead and prepare for all kinds of catastrophe but then nothing ever happens. The fact is, if I had “prepped” by having a couple bottles of calcium on hand, I wouldn’t be writing this article. I would simply have dosed Maple up and not given it a second thought. Instead of my cow nearly dying, there never would have been an emergency to begin with.
And that is why it is important to look ahead and prepare. Imagine if everyone in Texas had a months supply of food, an alternative heat source and knew to run their faucets to keep the pipes from freezing. There would have been way less pain and suffering.
We are seeing our civilization being stress tested. I don’t think it is intentionally being done to us. Rather, it’s the natural consequence of people choosing a life of ease over responsibility. Why would a civilization be strong and antifragile when the people who live in it are weak, reliant, and unprepared?
Start thinking about the weak links in you life. Do you have backup heat, running water, some basic medical supplies, and even a few weeks of extra food? That will go a long ways. Also, build your community, know your neighbors. You are never going to be prepared for everything. It’s impossible to anticipate every problem. But just like my neighbor was able to come thru and save my cow, your neighbors may be prepared in ways you didn’t account for. Prepping and community. That’s the future.
Mohawk Farmer Bear
