It’s been an interesting week here in Cassidyland. Cass has been exhibiting stallion-like behaviors towards Becca. That translates to running her off aggressively by biting her back legs and actually mounting her. Cass has always kept Becca in her place but this is all strange behavior. At one point she got herself so worked up chasing her, she got dangerously overheated. So, I had a few conversations with the vet and scheduled her to come out to examine her. In the meantime, she told me to separate the two girls.

Becca’s new temporary home is the round pen with our tried and true canopy tent for shelter. She’s not real happy but we can’t let her get hurt, either by her mother or running away from her mother. The past few weeks Cass has even been a bit “pissy” with me. But now that she has the pasture all to herself, she’s back to being my calm and wonderful girl.

The vet who was on duty for my emergency call the other night is who came out to examine her. First time meeting Dr. Fowinkle, though I’ve heard good things about her from friends. She was kind and completely impressed with how well-behaved Cass was. The exam showed a couple things for concern. Cass has residual edema in her mammary glands from having multiple foals and scarring to the mammary ducts. I thought she’d just never dried up her milk completely. She performed an ultrasound to get a look at her female parts and we found a possible reason for her behavior change. She has an abnormal ovary with multiple follicles, including some follicles that appear to have fibrin deposits. One of her concerns had been that maybe Cass was pregnant and we ruled that out! (There was a sexy stallion in the vicinity when she was with her trainer.) We sure didn’t need another baby. Whew!

The vet pulled some blood to send off to test her hormone levels. That will help confirm the type tumor it may be. The best case scenario is she could be put on birth control or some natural form of hormones to even them out. The worst case scenario is she would need the ovary removed surgically. That would mean a trip to Gainesville. For right now, she’s fine and I do let her and Becca out to graze together when I’m there to supervise. Cass has chased and mounted her a couple more times, but that’s settling down. Becca may be going to stay at the Barnhill’s down the road for a while, we’re playing that by ear. For right now, she hangs with the cows a bit and gets to flip a feed bucket around again. We’ll take things one step at at time.