Bad things seem to happen in threes

We wondered whether to include some of the more depressing aspects of farming on this blog, and then decided it would a bit unrealistic not to.

We have had a run of bad luck recently:

We were expecting another foal this year. The mare started to foal, but it soon became apparent that events were not progressing quickly enough and by the time she finally foaled with considerable veterinary assistance her filly foal was born dead.It was the mare’s first foal, and while it took about a week for her to recover from the physical ordeal, she didn’t really know what happened and so did not miss the foal.She has now recovered and is out grazing peacefully with the others.

That same weekend one of our Moiled cows gave birth to a dead calf. Calving progressed normally, and she is a very experienced cow so there was no obvious reason which is frustrating. The calf was full term and born bang on it’s due date.This cow has had a lot of calves, she knew exactly what had happened and would not leave the calf.

Each morning I would open the door of the shed and leave it open all day. She would have one or two mouthfuls of grass and then go back to sit with her calf.On the third morning she got up, had one last look back at her calf, and walked off to join the rest of the herd. She too has recovered and is out grazing peacefully in the sunshine.

The following weekend having hatched 10 chicks…..

….our broody hen and her chicks disappeared. We think the fox must have taken them, but there were no tell tale feathers strewn around, just no hen and no chicks.

There is an expression in farming which says that ‘where you have livestock you will have deadstock’. This sounds a bit callous but it is more a way of pointing that, even with the best will in the world, these things do happen and some things are beyond our control.