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The weather continues hot and dry, with thick smoke most days from the big fire that just keeps growing north of town. By last Sunday it had grown to more than 70,000 acres and more than 1,000 firefighters were trying to control it, but it is still growing daily.

Last Saturday we invited grandson Nick to eat dinner with us. We had a great visit (hadn’t had a chance to talk to him since he was here last winter with the fencing crew rebuilding some of our old fences and creating the new loading chute) then played Tripoli — a game he’s loved since we used to play it with him and his sister and parents.

Monday we moved the heifers to the lower back field, and the nine pairs (young cows) from the upper swamp pasture to the ditch pasture below Andrea’s house. The next morning one of the calves had gotten through the hot wire and was out in the hayfield, so Andrea and I got the calf back in. Phil Moulton brought three loads of round bales of second cut for the heifers this winter. We’ll be keeping all of Babe’s daughters to go back into the herd.

Yesterday Andrea helped me put black plastic on the stacks of round bales near Shiloh’s pen. After lunch, she drove Lynn to town to the eye doctor. He’s lost much of the vision in his right eye. The left one has been compensating and he didn’t realize it until he shut the left eye and couldn’t see much with the right eye. The eye doctor checked his eye and said the impaired vision is due to damage caused by high blood sugar, so now Lynn has to be more careful what he eats.

Last Monday we sent the six older cows, plus Pandemonium (the young cow that’s been in “jail” all summer with her calf) and Bimbo — the yearling bull — to the sale yard near Butte, Montana. We didn’t have to haul them in our trailer; the guy who hauls cattle to that sale from this area had room for ours in his semi, so he sent the guy who works for him with his big trailer to our place to pick up our cattle. The new loading chute worked great!

Then Andrea and I hiked to the lower field to check the heifers. When she’d looked at them the day before, one called Malindy had noisy breathing (but didn’t seem sick) so we wanted to check on her again.

She was the last to come out of the brush when the heifers came to greet us, and she was having trouble drawing air into her lungs. It sounded like snoring — a classic sign of diphtheria. This infection in the back of the throat affects the larynx (voice box) and is caused by the same bacterium that causes foot rot. It gets into mouth and throat tissues if there’s an abrasion. The infection and swelling reduce the diameter of the airway and can sometimes totally shut off the air passage and cause suffocation. The way to tell the difference between diphtheria and pneumonia is that the animal has trouble drawing air into the lung if it’s diphtheria, and trouble pushing air out of the lungs if it’s pneumonia (due to fluid and congestion in lung tissue) and the animals is sicker; pneumonia is a systemic infection whereas diphtheria is more localized in the throat area.

We brought Malindy to the corral to doctor, with a couple of buddies to keep her company. It was an effort for her to breathe, so we brought them very slowly. We got her into the head-catch and administered antibiotics — long-acting oxytetracycline that gives coverage for two-plus days — to combat infection, a small dose of dexamethasone to help reduce swelling and inflammation, and a large dose of DMSO squirted into the back of her mouth.

DMSO is excellent for treating diphtheria because it is a great anti-inflammatory and reduces swelling immediately. We’ve used it many times to treat calves with diphtheria and it works better than anything else to shrink obstructive swelling and allow the calf to breathe. When I checked on Malindy an hour later (after we let her and her buddies into a pen with shade so she could get out of the heat) she was breathing easier, no longer making snoring sounds, and contentedly chewing her cud.

The next morning Rick Doroney came at 6 a.m. to start working on Andrea’s roof. It gets so hot during the day that he prefers to start work almost before daylight, to be able to quit by mid-afternoon when it gets hot and windy.

Even though Andrea’s house is only 10 years old, shingles started blowing off the first year. The guys who built the house didn’t take the backing off the shingles and they didn’t stick down. With every strong wind, more shingles blew off. We kept putting some back on, but it finally got to the point where there was too much bare roof, so we hired Rick to put a metal roof on. Andrea and Jim helped. Andrea was on the roof taking out nails and removing old shingles, and she and Jim lifted the long metal pieces up to Rick so he wouldn’t have to keep going up and down the ladder.

Thursday afternoon Lynn and I went to town and he did the town errands while I went to the dentist. It’s time to try to do something about my broken teeth. I had some chipped teeth a few years ago, then broke more in October 2019 when Dottie tripped while galloping after a wayward cow (taking a herd to the 320 for fall pasture). When she did a somersault and squished my head into the snow and frozen mud, it not only broke the back of one eye socket but also broke more of my teeth.

At that point I was more concerned about my vision than teeth so I put off having them fixed. Then COVID came along and I didn’t go to town at all, and didn’t worry about the teeth. I was getting by, until a few more pieces broke off. Now I can’t chew on either side; I eat soft food or things I can nibble with my front teeth. The nice thing about the meat from China Doll is that it’s so tender I can take small bites of those roasts and mush it around with my tongue enough to break it up and swallow it!

But it’s time to get my teeth fixed. The dentist is going to try to fix them, but my next appointment isn’t until September 27 so I’ll be eating carefully in the meantime.

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