Post by ciscomavy71 on Apr 3, 2015 16:43:59 GMT -5
The cliffnotes version - was introduced to a guy who buys/sells cows. Went to his farm today (awesome setup - very nice) to see a Jersey he bought at the sale yesterday. She is young judging by her teeth, medium size (1000lb) and thin. She has a tail that has been broken a couple times (kinks mid-way up twice). She has a nasty scar on her front shoulder that is still healing, but skin is covering it and it looks healthy. She has poop cakes on her one hip and stomach (walks fine, amazing feet, but obviously lived in a S*** hole). She has 3 working quarters and one blank (looks like the teat was cut off). The three working quarters has not been milked for some time. They were painfully huge. She was in a head gate, but allowed me to hand milk with minimal fuss. I know she must have been hurting. It hurt me to look at her udder. Farmer comes over with the tubes you can put in the teat to open them up. I insert and milk just FLOWS out. To my amazement it was indeed milk. No smell, looked good. Once the teat was open and the pressure was off she let me rub her udder with no issue. Once the milk stopped flowing I noticed there was still a LOT of swelling. Her udder was not lumpy and I could push on it all over. My cow did not have significant edema when she calved, so I am not used to seeing this. The front quarter looked like it had a football in there, even after the milk was out, but again, when I massaged it - there was nothing hard in there.
I realize the gamble here. I realize the work that would be needed. The quarantine, the testing, the chance. My question is about her udder - what are the chances that this is just swelling verses something else? I have been BLESSED with a cow who is low maintenance and has not had previous issues, so I don't really know what some issues look like. The udder was HUGE but not hot and not red. My hands were covered in poop, so tasting was out of the question.
She is being offered at meat price $0.68/lb which is what he paid for her. He was given no previous history at the sale about her. I am betting she was brought to this sale from another sale as we don't have much dairy in our area. In fact she was the ONLY jersey at the sale.
Thoughts?