Post by zephyrhillsusan on Mar 9, 2014 17:13:53 GMT -5
At the end of the mastitis thread in Long Live Dexters!, I promised you all an update on my efforts to deal with Siobhan's self-sucking. Here is the post from my blog, The Saga of My Self-Sucking Cow and How I Got Her to Stop. I'm going to warn you right now, it's loooong! 
And it has LOTS of photos and links! It could just about be a master's thesis on self-sucking! 
Well, not really, but I hope it will help anyone who ever has a cow develop this pernicious habit. I hope it will help people catch this problem quickly. Even more, I hope it will help people know how to prevent the possibility from ever arising. I had never heard of self-sucking a few short months ago. I had never imagined such a thing--for heavens sake, surely cows know the milk is meant for their calves and their humans! 
Well, now I know that it's not as rare as you might think, and it's been a problem for farmers from as far back as the 1800's--a problem that with all of modern technology at our fingertips we still have not been able to definitively solve. I don't pretend that I have solved the problem of self-sucking cows for the whole bovine world, but I hope and pray that I have found a way to break my cow's habit. I don't pretend that I've cured her of it. She will have to wear her Siobhan's Super Anti-Self-Sucking Surcingle for the rest of her days, I would think. I had thought of taking it off when she's close to calving . . . until I found a video (the third one in my post) online that changed my mind on that! (I won't ruin it with a spoiler.) She will certainly need some close supervision when it's time for her to be bred, and maybe for Royal's safety she will have to have her surcingle off. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. If I sound a bit giddy or loopy here, I am! This has been H**L! But now all I have to worry about is collecting milk samples on Monday and getting them off to TQML, then waiting to see if her mastitis has cleared up. Sufficient until tomorrow is the evil thereof. But I'm really hoping for good news.
And it has LOTS of photos and links! It could just about be a master's thesis on self-sucking! 
Well, not really, but I hope it will help anyone who ever has a cow develop this pernicious habit. I hope it will help people catch this problem quickly. Even more, I hope it will help people know how to prevent the possibility from ever arising. I had never heard of self-sucking a few short months ago. I had never imagined such a thing--for heavens sake, surely cows know the milk is meant for their calves and their humans! 
Well, now I know that it's not as rare as you might think, and it's been a problem for farmers from as far back as the 1800's--a problem that with all of modern technology at our fingertips we still have not been able to definitively solve. I don't pretend that I have solved the problem of self-sucking cows for the whole bovine world, but I hope and pray that I have found a way to break my cow's habit. I don't pretend that I've cured her of it. She will have to wear her Siobhan's Super Anti-Self-Sucking Surcingle for the rest of her days, I would think. I had thought of taking it off when she's close to calving . . . until I found a video (the third one in my post) online that changed my mind on that! (I won't ruin it with a spoiler.) She will certainly need some close supervision when it's time for her to be bred, and maybe for Royal's safety she will have to have her surcingle off. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. If I sound a bit giddy or loopy here, I am! This has been H**L! But now all I have to worry about is collecting milk samples on Monday and getting them off to TQML, then waiting to see if her mastitis has cleared up. Sufficient until tomorrow is the evil thereof. But I'm really hoping for good news.
