Read the latest news from Essex Farm in the note from Kristin Kimball’s blog below:
“I had my annual kitchen-table meeting with the state vet, Roger Ellis, and our own David Goldwasser this week. We’ve been enrolled in a New York State program for dairy cow health ever since we bought a cow who brought a case of Johne’s disease along with her. Johne’s is a weird one – among other quirks, cows can be asymptomatic for a long time but still shed the disease and spread it to young stock. Also, the test is infamous for yielding false negatives. Once Johne’s gets going in your herd it is a real pain to eradicate it, and the disease itself is very serious. If a cow is symptomatic, she’s a goner. The state program offers subsidized tests, and annual herd health advice. We have not had another cow test positive, nor seen any signs of the disease, for four years, so we are beginning to feel we are in the safe zone. Still, it’s good to have the opportunity to sit down with the vets to review the health of the herd. This year, the main topic of conversation was mastitis, as our somatic cell counts have been higher than usual recently. We came up with some new goals and herd protocols.
File this under bad luck/good luck. We bought some 700-lb square bales of hay from a neighbor this week, to use as bedding. When Travis was hauling them home, the tongue on the wagon broke, and the bales and the wagon careened off the road, up the ditch, and then smashed through a fence. Bad luck. The good luck part was that it happened on a deserted stretch of Middle Road, and not on Route 22 in the midst of ferry traffic or into someone’s house or car or any of the myriad anxiety-producing scenarios my mind can invent. We do have to fix the fence….” (Continue reading this Essex Farm Note.)
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