Moooving On: Injured Calf Breezes Through Physical Therapy

Lowla, an Angus calf who experienced severe head and neck trauma at just three days old and was unable to walk without assistance, was thought to be a goner. But High Ridge Farms employee Kathryn Russell would not give up on the plucky baby cow.

At first, Lowla was nursing and gamboling about like any other calf at the North Carolina beef farm. But Russell received a phone call in early October from a neighbor who believed that one of the farm’s cows was dying out in the field.

Russell went to check on the cattle and discovered three-day-old Lowla, severely injured and unable to stand on her own, probably as the result of a kick by another cow, local media reported. Russell brought Lowla and her mother back to the barn and called the vet.

Upon inspection of the calf, the vet said that Lowla probably would not live to see another day.

But when Russell arrived to work the next morning, she found Lowla alive, “and knew that she was a fighter and determined to live,” she told Storyful. Russell then asked her boss, Bruce Cuddy, if she could take the calf home to try to rehabilitate her.

Russell thought that Lowla could benefit from physical therapy with a walker of some sort, but was not sure how to begin making one.

She called her local Lowe’s Home Improvement Store in Monroe, North Carolina, and they told her to bring the calf in immediately so they could try to engineer a solution.

When Russell arrived at Lowe’s, she met Keith, an employee who has since gained a slight measure of internet fame for concocting the calf walker out of PVC pipe.

“He worked tirelessly without taking a lunch break until the job was complete,” Russell said in a Facebook post detailing the encounter and thanking Keith for his help.

That night, Lowla began to walk again using the new device.

Then, on October 15, only two days after her physical therapy began, Lowla stunned Russell with her speedy recovery.

“As of yesterday, she was able to stand on her own. And today she is able to walk without the wheelchair with little assistance,” Russell wrote on Instagram.

Like the baby cow she helped nurse back to health, Russell is clearly outstanding in her field. Credit: Kathryn Russell via Storyful