What Happens To Injured Cows?
Cows get sick and injured in the backcountry. Here's how range riders handle it.
Pepper, Red, Jazzy, and I spent the better part of yesterday clearing out a pasture called Lion’s Gulch. Personally, the days that I work alone alongside my nonhuman coworkers are my favorites. I get to work at my own pace, which tends to be slow and steady, not fast and hard. After all, there’s no rush.
Lion’s Gulch is a unique place on our grazing permit. It’s basically a gigantic pocket for cows. The only path there is through a steep ravine, and the out-and-back cow trail along its bottom has a sturdy gate. Locking cattle in Lion’s is easy and extremely handy, and that’s exactly what we did last week to hold them in the right part of the permit before they go 10 miles north to the next pasture.
We get about a mile into Lion’s Gulch where a cattle tank serves as a milemarker. A spring dribbles into the pipe that fills the tank, making water more easily accessible to the herd. Of course, the cows like to loaf around the tank as well.
My little squad and I tiptoed past the dozing cows around the tank as we worked our way west towards the end of the pasture. We’d pick them up on our way out. At the end of the pasture, right before the trail drops off into a ravine, we scooped 10 pair and a bull out of a shady patch of aspens.
My least favorite cow, Spot Face, or #847, was in that bunch. She got her nickname because of the gigantic black spot on her forehead on her otherwise white face (super creative name, I know). I despise her because she’s an aggressive dog fighter. She’s one of two cows we have that actively hunt down dogs to attack them. To my relief, she didn’t try any of that funny business yesterday, and her pack moved to the east with very little pressure.
When the aspen cows joined the tank bunch, all of the sleepy water tank cows stood up and waddled their way east. All except for one: #74. I asked Pepper and Red to “get her up.” Despite their nagging, the cow would only lift up her hind end, not her front. Not a good sign. I rode up to a few feet in front of her to get a better look. Something was definitely wrong.
I whooped at her. She didn’t move and uttered a pitiful moo. I looked her over the best I could without disturbing her even more. Her feet looked fine, her legs weren’t obviously broken or otherwise injured, her udder looked normal, and she wasn’t emaciated or sick-looking. My best guess is that she ate larkspur, which is highly toxic to cows, or injured her front half in a way that wasn’t visible. Either way, her condition was severe. I’ll be shocked if she makes it.
A handful of adult cows die on the permit every year. Usually, we find them after they’ve already passed, but sometimes, we stumble across them during their final moments. Thankfully, cattle injuries typically aren’t so awful or occur so remotely that we can either treat them with antibiotics in the field or walk them to a trailer.
Here’s an example of field doctoring:
We use a .22 rifle outfitted with CO2 cartridges to shoot needles loaded with medicine to treat sick cows and calves. Sick animals usually have scours (diarrhea), droopy ears, watery and runny eyes, and runny noses with cloudy snot. They walk slowly because they don’t feel good, so end up at the back of the herd. This makes them easy to spot amidst hundreds of cows.
If cows have physical injuries manifesting as sore feet, locked up joints, severe limps, or other things that aren’t bacterial infections, we try our best to get them back to the home ranch. Doing so involves carefully walking injured cows to a place where we can set up a trap with metal panels and load them into a trailer. From there, we drop them at our corrals located right off the highway, and the rancher in Crawford comes by with his stock trailer. He’ll pick them up, take them home, and have a vet out to examine them. Sometimes, though, the injuries are too far gone, and the animal must be dispatched.
A good example of this is Skippy, a calf we had on the permit two years ago. In late September of 2022, Skippy’s knee got jabbed by a pine stob. The wood broke off and lodged itself in his leg. Dan treated him three times with antibiotics, but since there was no good way to remove the branch, it kept getting reinfected. Late October rolled around and gather occurred. Skippy’s mom went home with the rest of the cows, but she left Skippy behind. Instead of following his mom’s scent south to the corrals, Skippy limped north. He went three miles before holing up in a little meadow. As a result, he was seven miles from where we could trailer him.
What’s more humane, forcing a critically injured calf to walk seven miles, or dispatching him and putting him in the freezer? Dan and I opted for the freezer option. We found Skippy mid-November and asked the rancher if we could shoot him. He said yes, and that we can have the meat if we’d like.
On Thanksgiving Day, instead of hunting elk, we put Skippy out of his misery. When we walked up to his body, the size of his infection blew us away. His knee was as big as a basketball and oozed white pus. His entire left hind leg was atrophied. We left that quarter in the woods and took the remaining three, as well as his backstraps, tenderloins, and neck meat.
We renamed that meadow Skippy Park.
Skippy was a very tasty little cow. Being an old, tough cow, #74 likely wouldn’t please my palate as much as Skippy did. But I hope she passes swiftly, her calf rejoins the rest of the herd, and a hungry black bear finds her utterly, delectably delicious.