October is apparently coming in with a heat wave this year! We’ve been in the 80s and 90s for a week now and not a speck of rain on the horizon. The fields are looking parched instead of lush with that late Fall rush of green. A few of the trees pretended to turn leaves, but really, Fall is coming in about the same as June. We even have enough humidity that we have foggy mornings without clouds!

We spent the weekend at football on Saturday and my phone overheated and shut itself down twice. (Sometimes I wish I could get away with that!) I found my kiddos napping under the truck while I was working concessions. (Sometimes I wish I could get away with that too!)

Mr. Fix-It had the crew out there measuring twice and cutting once on some building projects in the garage. We’re working on a platform for the truck camper, some modifications to the chicken tractor, and some porch repairs. They’ve also been under the vehicles helping change the oil and check the brakes before winter.

Then Molly up and dropped a calf early (very early!) on Monday morning.

Unfortunately it’s been a struggle. Molly went down in the field with what we think is toxemia (or milk fever, even though there’s no actual fever) and we had to call the vet. She’s never been sick a day in her life and we’ve never had any calving problems on the farm, so this was a new experience. We did lose one calf, but there were no major complications with it. Especially not to the cow and not in the birth itself.

We’ve had sheep get it before, but we treated them in a pen with an IV. They’re much easier to catch and move! The good news (and one reason why we called the vet!) is that they can usually recover just fine.

We treated her right in the field with calcium and dextrose. She finally staggered up and charged the vet, and the truck, and the tractor. The illness and then the quick, intense treatment can make them a little loopy and she’s definitely not herself! She’s not out of the woods yet on this and we’ll be worrying over it for the next several days.

Molly’s been kinda crazy since this all went down and not her normal awesome momma self. She’s been hopping fences and galavanting off into the “wilds” of the unmowed back pasture, taking her baby with her. That makes checking up on them problematic. Last night we were out there late (or early, whichever) in the dark trying to find them again. If she’s ok, we don’t want to stress her while she gets herself together. She’s always pasture-raised her babies. I’d just prefer just having her close to the house and with the rest of her little family herd. But she seems to think she should do it her own way and she’s about to find herself locked in the barn!

The grass is tall back there, it’s pitch black back there by the tree line, and there are SO MANY grasshoppers and night bugs moving around! Between the breeze through the grass, the grasshoppers leaping away from you, and the cicadas…a herd of buffalo could have sneaked up on me and I wouldn’t have known until I bumped into them.

But we found them again. And Molly’s still on her feet.

And I saw some pretty cool things out there!

Also walked right smack into a few…

So we watch, and wait, and try not to interfer unless we’re needed.

There’s pros and cons to raising animals mostly on pasture and this is one of the challenges. Penning them up for lambing or calving means you have them right at your fingers tips if they need anything. And sheep are much easier to move around than cows! But 10 healthy calves in the fresh air and clean pasture over the years makes it seem like a decent trade for that one time you have an issue.

And it was a bit of a shock to the system for us to sit there and add up Molly’s age and number of calves when talking to the vet. Mr. Fix-It and I kept looking at each other, thinking, wow, we’ve been doing this for a while now! {smile}

What’s going on at your homeplace lately?