What a surprise!

We watched Fern all day long. She showed no symptoms of heat, which is promising! I'm not entirely persuaded yet, since one of the babies had been going into heat the same time as Fern, and she, too, showed no sign of heat. So maybe the warm weather today prevented heat. We'll keep an eye on her.

I went down to the pasture late this afternoon to see if Fern would stand for me, as she does when she's in heat. Phil was headed down to the pasture and we stopped to look at the animals.

"Is Annabelle dead?" he asked.

And, bizarrely enough, YES! Annabelle was dead. Very newly dead, but definitely dead.

Ten days short of a year since we got her.

Phil mentioned, in retrospect, that she hadn't seemed as chipper this morning. But still: just because a son has a little tummy ache doesn't mean that I expect him to turn up dead later in the day. Too surreal!

She had been laying in a dry water tank. When he moved her out, he noticed some milk in the tank. Her bag looked a bit larger than normal. If she had just given birth, we would have said milk fever, since she showed no sign of symptoms and then was dead. As far as I know, she was still nursing her two bucks. I've never heard of milk fever more than a day after giving birth.

Mastitis didn't appear to be a problem, as her udder was pliable and soft. She didn't have an obvious parasite load, and her pelt was luxurious and free of bare patches. She really looked perfectly healthy.

We spent the next several hours disposing of her into the compost pile. We took out her innards, both to see if we could determine the cause of death and to allow her to decompose more quickly.

Her innards looked perfect. All the right color, with a nice layer of fat, so she didn't starve to death. Her esophagus appeared clean, so it didn't look like she choked to death. Her skull wasn't deformed so, presumably, no cow stepped on her head. She did move off of lower pasture to the upper pasture, but that shouldn't be too bad a change in forage, as none of the other animals appear to be in bad shape after the move.

I don't think she died of poisoning, since none of the other animals are sick. I don't think she died of bloat, since she's had some fresh greens to eat and some hay.

Her black bucklings did not appear to be suffering from heat exhaustion, but perhaps, if she had a cold and was feeling a bit off, heat exhaustion killed her. That's our working theory, in absence of any better ones.

In any case, we're praying protection for the rest of our animals.

If we only knew what killed her, we'd feel much more secure. As it is: we don't know what to expect. Lord, please protect our cows!