A Broken Jewel

Despite my high hopes, positive attitude, and the care and patience of everyone on the farm, Opal will not recover. The vet is coming to put her down today. Opal hasn’t stood up in more than two weeks. I have spent the last week watching her appetite, her weight, and her spirit, dwindle. I have seen that the look in her eyes has changed from confusion and determination, to acceptance and the distance that comes when a living being is ready to leave the world.

It was my decision. Essentially, I’ve signed her death warrant. There is no easy decision here for me. I don’t like to give up on things. Even when all the potential is gone, I still search for one tiny little spark, some indicator that there is still hope. But to wait for every last spark to fade from this girl would be cruel. I have made the right decision. Her life will end before another week goes by, before she wastes away to nothing. My decision will give her peace.

I told her twin sister, Onyx, a couple of days ago. I apologized for lying to her. I had assured her Opal would be back. At the time, I believed that! I’m sure some will read this and think I am nuts. They’re just cows, Onyx doesn’t understand or care. But cows are also herd animals. They are meant to live in groups. With the exception of the few months where one was dry and the other milking, Onyx and Opal have always been together. And Onyx knows the stall beside her is still empty.

During the morning shift that I worked when Opal was first injured, she had walked to the back end of the pasture during their outside time. It took me a while to get her back in; it was a long, slow walk back. Onyx, who I’ve been told is usually among the first to go back in the barn, waited for her sister to catch up to her before she went in that day. Onyx won’t dwell on this the way a human dwells on such a loss, but I feel she does understand, and feel the emptiness.

Though this is a sad day for me, there is happiness to be found. A young heifer of mine has been moved into the “pre-fresh” area of the barn. Pre-fresh is an free-stall area (cows are not tied, but can roam about within the confines of the space) of the farm where the cows that are within a month or so of calving are housed. In warm weather, once a cow is dried off, she is put out to pasture for a while, and then brought back in to pre-fresh. In the winter, they stay in the pre-fresh area the entire time they are dry.

Lolypop, Lilly’s two-year-old daughter, has been moved into pre-fresh. My son named her when HE was two years old! We try to keep all the cow’s names to seven letters or less, so we had to misspell it to make it fit.

Lolypop is also Opal’s niece, so though Opal has no daughters of her own to carry on her genes, she does have Lolypop and a couple other, younger nieces who will continue to move forward. Though I doubt it, I have to wonder if Lolypop will be the one to stand by Onyx and fill that empty stall. I would love that! However, they tend to be placed in their stalls for more functional reasons (such as their comfort level in a particular location and how they match up in size and appearance to their stall mates) than heredity or emotional ones.

It is hard to ignore the circle of life when working on or around a farm. You say goodbye to one, and another comes up and gives you something new to celebrate! It can be a very life-affirming thing. Life always goes on. Even when you don’t feel like stepping forward, life steps forward and carries you with it. Into the next chapter.