Life and Death on the farm

I wrote a little treatise on livestock and deadstock in my "notes from the farm" section on the website. My farming philosophy is based on working with nature and natural processes. I don't like to introduce chemicals or management techniques that work against nature and against the natural processes of animal or plant life cycles. The dog in on the right in this (sorry it's blurry) photo is my sweet Honey. Her "sister" is Maple. They both came to us as puppies in the summer of 2016. The end of August of 2023 Honey was diagnosed with an abdominal tumor. It was very large. Prognosis was very bad. The vet gave her four to six weeks to live at the very most. At the time, Honey was very full of life. I saw the X-ray, I had no doubt of the diagnosis, but as the vet said, "She has no idea she is sick". So, I took her home and decided we would just give her the best doggie life we could until the disease took her. Our dogs live like dogs. They don't live in the house. They have a comfortable pen in the garage with access to the outside in a fenced in pen. We let them out to roam daily with their radio collars on. Also, my daughter walks them every day. Most days she walks them four miles. Some days only two miles. But at least four to six days a week they walk a minimum of two miles a day. Honey's timeline of six weeks came and went. Occasionally she had what we called an "episode" where she was down for three days and didn't want to do much. But then she recovered and was fine. April of 2024 came and it was time to take them to the vet for their regular check-ups and heart worm tests. I admit I was feeling cocky that my dog was still alive and in hindsight should not have taken her at all. The vet was flabbergasted that she was still alive and acting well. The mistake was letting her get her vaccinations. She was too sick to handle them. Later in the day she collapsed and remained catatonic for three days. Fortunately she recovered and I decided she should not go to the vet again. After that incident she stayed well and happy. As the year turned into 2025 she started to slow down. The end of January brought some really cold weather, which she did OK with. But soon after she didn't want to go on her walks and gradually grew weaker. About a week and a half later she died, quietly, peacefully in her pen with Maple by her side. We had heard horror stories of dogs dying in agony from the same condition. We felt very blessed that we got a full year and a half bonus time with our Honey, and that she did not suffer when she died. I have rarely "put an animal down". I have had two cases with goats where they were seriously suffering. One was seizing uncontrollably. I asked a friend to put her down. Another was screaming in pain, and I called the vet to put her down. Otherwise, we practice animal "hospice" care, where we make the animal as comfortable as possible and help them access water and food to the best of their ability.

Part of keeping animals is inevitably having to deal with their death. We all love kidding season and the bringing of new life. But even that is often accompanied by complications which occasionally brings dead kids or less often the mothers. Over time we have learned how to prevent most of that, but there will always be circumstances beyond our control. There also will always just be old age or the consequences of poor nutrition in early life before we owned the animal. Currently we have one 15 year old doe goat still stubbornly hanging in there. Along with her, we anxiously await the birth of kids from five pregnant does. The circle of life continues.

Stay tuned for new kids and when we re-locate our beehives and begin a new circle of life there!