Preggers?

We have had quite the conundrum with finding out whether our cow Chloe is pregnant or not. We have tried to draw blood three times. Only once did we get enough to test her. That test came back as a "Open (meaning not pregnant) with recommendation to retest". That means her hormone levels weren't high enough to indicate pregnancy, but higher than a normal cow's.

This past Friday the AI technician came by to AI Pumpkin, our second Jersey. He agreed to palpate Chloe since it had been about three or four months since she'd been AI'd. We hadn't noticed any heats, but we hadn't noticed any when we thought she was preganant before, so she could have very hard to detect heats. To add to the confusion, the AI guy couldn't tell if she was bred or not when he palpated her. Her uterus is too far decended into her body and he couldn't pull it up to feel it. Luckily, he agreed to come by today with his ultrasound machine on his way back to town from another client.

And the verdict is?.........

NOT BRED!

We're not having good luck with this cow and pregnancies. What makes it worse is that she will not even be remotely marketable until she's close to calving, so this adds another 3 months to the time we're feeding a cow that is giving us nothing. Don't get me wrong. I love Chloe. I wish we could keep her, but we got a cow as an investment and so far she's only given us 4 months of milk in the year we've had her. I've contemplated turning her into hamburger, but just considering her original purchase price of $1800, she'd come out to somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.50 /lb. Not to mention the just plain stupidity of slaughtering a perfectly good milk cow. Oh well. There's nothing for it but to try again. The vet gave her a shot that should bring her into heat on Wednesday, at which time he'll come out and AI her again.

On the bright side, when the vet was using the ultrasound machine he said everything looked healthy in there. At least we know she can be bred.