fly prevention program

Sure, I know it's been almost 2 weeks since my last post. No, I didn't fall off the planet, I've just been extremely busy with Studio Calico plus some other personal business to attend to. I'm alive, doing well, and there should be no cause for worry. Another reason I haven't posted is because I've only taken about 3 photos in the last 2 weeks and I can't stand to post without photos, but here goes.

A couple of weeks ago, Greg informed me that we needed a fly prevention program at our farm. When I first heard this, I about laughed myself silly.

FLY PREVENTION PROGRAM?????? You've got to be kidding me. I really thought he had made it up.

Turns out, most of our cows have pink-eye and the cause for pink-eye in cows is due to the flies on the cow-poop landing on the cows' eyes. Yes, it's a wonderful thought, I know.

So, off Dad and Greg went to Southern States (another farm supply company here) to get a thingy for the cows to walk under that scrapes along their back with some sort of repellent on it, some spray-repellent, and some L8400 (I think those are the right letters and numbers), which is an injectible antibiotic.

The first order of business was to herd the cows and calves into the corral to spray them down and inject them. The first time they did this, it took all day....literally. All. Day.

Still, they couldn't get one of the female calves sprayed, and after the second and third day trying to pen her in to treat her, we were getting worried she might go blind. And, if she had gone blind, we wouldn't want to sell her, we'd just sweet-feed her, make her fat, then butcher her.

Luckily, with all the practice of corralling the cows every 3 or 4 days, they've gotten the hang of it. Greg now has a cow call which consists of beating a bucket on the feeding trough and yelling "Here Cow" in an announcer's voice. Funny, but effective.

I'm proud to say, they've treated all the cows multiple times and our fly prevention program has a high success rate. Yes, we still have flies. There's no way to get rid of them all, but there's much less, and the pink-eye is under control.

Also, I'm proud to report another birth on our farm. Our fourth live birth occurred on Thursday. We have one more to go this year, so wish us luck.

I'll be back later this week with photos of our partially-demolished farmhouse.