The vaccine that all four received is a 7-Way vaccine against clostridial diseases, which are bacterial diseases spread through spores. (One common clostridial disease is botulism.) If critters become sick from a clostridial infection, they can go from seemingly healthy to deathly ill very quickly. Ironically, these diseases often affect the most well-fed, healthiest, and fastest-growing calves.
All four were also wormed, which should protect them against a number of internal and external parasites. We've been needing to worm them for awhile, but I got a bit anxious about it when T3 (one of the heifers) had fairly large patches of hair loss. Here's a picture:
In general cattle rub on everything and love to be scratched second only to being fed. I'm hoping some of the hair loss is just due to normal rubbing, and John assures me that it's nothing we need to be concerned about. (I'm still not convinced, and the fact that Sydney, the dog, was pulling off mouthfuls of T3's hair was enough to make me even more squeamish.)
Finally, Daisy received a second injection: Scour Bos 9, which means that her calf will benefit from drinking milk that is rich in antibody-filled colostrum. Calf scours are a nasty diarrhea caused by various viral and bacterial infections.
Because we have such a modest cattle operation, here are also some photos of how we managed them. We positioned panels so that we could squeeze the cattle into place to keep them still and safe. And I have to say that all four of them were troopers -- nobody overreacted or got fussy (me included), and though I think they have some sore hips and hind ends from the injections, they're better for the experience.
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