Well, on the one hand, cows with spots are adorable. Think Texas Longhorns or British Whites (which I DESPERATELY want!). However, spotty cows are a problem. A few weeks ago, we noticed that one of our cows had rubbed off a lot of hair from under her jaw and on her neck.
Google suggested that the most likely culprit was lice (not transmissible to people, otherwise I might now be cow-less). So everyone got a pour on wormer that covers biting and sucking lice. Well, mostly everyone. One of our cows is ridiculously skittish for no reason at all so she got missed.
However, while some spots were getting better, others were clearly getting worse. And even the babies have a few spots. But seen here, 2718 is definitely the worst off.
A second dose of wormer was called for anyways to break the lice cycle, and the vet is coming out Saturday for a pregnancy check so I wasn’t super worried. We had the horse vet out in the interim and she suggested perhaps ringworm but to ask the cow vet.
Well, folks, we are now fairly certain that it is in fact ringworm. My human experiment husband informed me last night that he has ringworm on his arm. He is good for catching fun stuff from the animals, so I trust it’s accurate. Maybe I need to start exposing him to sick animals and see what cultures!
We will confirm on Saturday, but best to get treatment started in the interim. Bad news, wormer doesn’t treat ring worm because it’s a fungus. But iodine does! Guess I need to practice my aim with a squirt bottle. Wish me luck!
Sourwood Hill 