Sietche is a 14 months old heifer.

We adopted her at 6 months of age along with a little male of 2 months from a local dairy farm.

We came to see all the little calves in their nursery being bottle fed.

We met Clifford the little boy calf and their foster mother.ISSA who takes excellent care of all these babies. She personally finds homes for all the little boys to prevent  them going to slaughter.

We started our own animal  rescue in the summer of 2009 and opened a sanctuary in Upton, MA where we are leasing land for our animals. One of the animal we rescued is a “ zebu” a four year old steer who used to be with a Jersey cow in his old place, so we liked the idea of adopting Clifford. We went to the dairy farm to bottle feed Clifford and bond with him until he was weaned. Then Issa talked to us about a very special little girl named Sietchie, she said what characterize her is her sweetness and the fact that she is small and still fragile, having had a pneumonia as a baby and further developing absesses on her lungs. Issa worked lovingly to heal Sietchie, but she was not fit to become a dairy cow. She was looking for a good home for her. We followed Issa to see the young heifers and when we saw the little one we noticed how beautiful and sweet she was. It was love at first sight and we made a commitment to adopt the two of them.

Issa drove to our sanctuary last October with the two calves. She drove the truck into the pasture and as soon as they were released they both started to run and frolick and we were all smiles at their delight. Next the lonely zebu walked toward them and Sietchie went to him first., noseled and licked him, it was clear she had fallen in love with Marley.

After giving Issa a tour of our sanctuary, she felt so pleased the two little one had found a good home.

We still bottle fed Clifford and Sietchie for about a month so we could really bond together. They became so close to us often nudging us and licking us with their raspy tongues. Sietchie was always the sweetest and extravagant with affection. It was a match made in heaven. After a few months at our sanctuary they both were thriving and we were like proud parents. Although, we have many wonderful animals in our place, Sietchie occupies a very special place in our hearts.

Now, in mid-may a very unfortunate accident happened to Sietchie. We did not see it happen, we only noticed something was wrong when one Sunday morning as we arrived at the sanctuary, we found her downcast, standing still against a tree her mouth drooling. We noticed she had a large swelling undernearh her left jaw, she was obviously in pain and our hearts stopped at this sorry sight.

We immediately called our vet, but could not get hold of her being a Sunday, so we tried  two friends from a near by sanctuary and ask them if they could come and help. They rushed over, they are both very knowledgeable and administered first aid to her immediately.

When our vet came to see Sietchie ,she felt pretty sure that it was “lumpy jaw” a serious infectious disease with very poor prognosis.

We talked to Issa about the accident that happened to Siechie and the different opinions we had received. She suggested that we may want to take Sietchie to the Woodstock CT campus of Tufts university as they treat a lot of farm animals there, specially cows.

 We thought it was a good idea as we wanted to be absolutely sure about her condition. An x-ray would give us a much better idea and when we got there with Sietchie after an hour in our van, as always she was very cooperative.

Shortly after being there the doctor looked at her, found a broken loose tooth which he extracted and diagnosed it was “lumpy jaw” as well..

Still doubting we insisted to have an x-ray done,and at the surprise of the doctor it  reaveled a broken jaw with an infection gone to the bone.

The doctor also opened a drain hole under her jaw and prescribed two rounds of antibiotics for a month. I had to learn to give a cow shots and felt quite apprehensive about it and was never quite sure I was doing it right which was nerve racking. Still Sietchie was always patient and so forgiving even though she is in constant pain.

While her treatment was going on, we stayed in touch daily with Issa, She has been so helpful and supportive.As for us we have done the utmost to care and support Sietchie during this critical period. Twice daily we prepared a special diet of soft nutritious food. We put her in a shed by herself so that she would be protected and also to give her , her medicine and cleanse her drain hole.

It became clear that she needed our presence in order to eat.For instance, if Patrick stepped out she would stop eating until he came back. We were astounded by that. When we were both close to her, she would look at us in turn with the deepest large dark eyes so full of love and sweetness that it would make our hearts melt.We both sat quietly near her and in turn sent her love and light. It was a real communion, we could feel a tangible aura of love and peace filling up the room. We never experienced anything like this before,it was a moment of grace and a special blessing coming to us from her, We believe Sietchie is a real angel.

Feeding time became more and more special between Sietchie and us. As we sat close to her she in turn would go to one of us and drop some hay on Patrick’s lap and eat it there and start licking him at the same time. She then would take a bite of her soft food and come to me and drop some on my arm and lick my hand and arm as I hold the dish up to her, She would also lick my face and hair and soon both of us would be covered with dengy and wetness from her tongue. Funny, we did not mind at all as she was showing us so much love.

The end of the prescribed shots came on may 24 and on the 26 we had a vet come with portable equipment to take new x-rays. Again Sietchie was so sweet and cooperative, the vet thought she was a real sweetheart. However the pictures of her jaw revealed a bad outcome. The healing of the bone we had all along expected did not take place due to fragments of bones that had broken away from the jaw and were floating loose cutting out blood supply to the bone.

The only way we can save Sietchie  is for her to have surgery at Tufts. First she needs to have an ultra-sound to determine the extent of the surgery. Depanding on the complexcity of the procedure we could be looking at a bill between 2 to 4000 dollars.Without this much needed surgery, Sietchie will not survive,

We have done everything in our power so far and have already spend about 1200 dollars out of pocket, we simply don’t have the means to spend more that is why at this point we are sending out a plea for donations to save Siechie.