Rescuing a Heifer

This afternoon, shortly after Jeremy arrived at the barn for midafternoon feeding, he was sweeping in the hay when he glanced out toward the newly frozen pond and caught a glimpse of something brown floating in the center that looked, at first, like mud. But mud doesn't float. He looked harder and realized that the object floating in the midst of a ring of broken ice was all that was visible of a heifer who was in the water, swimming for her life. He called down to the house and reached Tom, catching us in the middle of a sleepy Sunday afternoon of lolling around to watch football. Laura had just left a few minutes before to go back to college after Thanksgiving break, but Caleb was visiting and Luke was at home. All four of us grabbed coats and boots and ran outside.

At Jeremy's suggestion, we hoisted the canoe down from the garage loft, balanced it on the ATV, and carried it up behind the barn. In the middle of the pond was a ring of broken ice and the sodden dark head of the exhausted heifer. We don't have a picture of the heifer in the water -- we didn't have a camera until after the emergency was over. But here's a picture of the hole in the ice and of the heifer's tracks, showing how she moseyed out over the ice until she reached the center of the pond, where she broke through.



Luke and Caleb grabbed rope from the garage, I found a halter, and Jeremy drove the tractor with the bucket loader up to the pond. Tom and Luke slid the canoe gingerly over the thin ice to the hole where the heifer had broken through. They balanced half in the canoe, half on the thin rim of ice, while they got the halter on her head and tied the rope to the winch on the ATV. Caleb and Jeremy ran the ATV and the winch. The first try was a failure; the ATV slid forward dangerously toward the pond, while the rope snapped loose from the heifer's neck. But on the second try, with Tom chopping away at the edge of the ice with an axe to make more room to tug her free, the taut cable hauled the heifer head first out of the hole and onto the ice. Here's a picture of the track where we hauled her out. You can see how the edge of the hole is broken where she emerged; then there's the trail where she slid across the ice to the edge, and the tracks left by the ATV as it backed up, pulling on the rope.


On the snowy bank of the pond, the heifer seemed to be intact except for blood dripping from a tear in her ear, but she was too shocked and cold even to try to get up. Tom phoned the vet, who said that if her body temperature was lower than 98, she wouldn't have the muscular ability to stand. In the end, she had to be rolled into the bucket of the tractor and carried down to the shop to be warmed up with blankets and propane heaters. Here she is, wrapped in blankets at first, and then later on, with the blankets underneath her so that the heat could reach her wet fur and dry her out as it warmed her:




For at least an hour, her body temperature was too low to register on Tom's rectal thermometer -- somewhere below 92 degrees. But although she was shivering violently, the heifer was looking around, responding, and holding up her head. After a while she began to chew her cud. Perhaps two hours after Jeremy first spotted her, her heifer's temperature hit 99 and Tom got her to her feet. She's back with her friends now, no doubt repeating her story over and over again. Jeremy gets the credit for a banner day today -- if he hadn't glanced outside when he did, that heifer wouldn't have a story to tell!