The lives of farm animals have been riddled with hazards. While catastrophic epizootics are well-known in agricultural history, less attention has been devoted to the daily perils that loomed over the lives of farm animals. This article contends that the records of animal insurance provide a way to examine these daily hazards. It surveys the development of animal insurance in twentieth-century Finland and considers what kind of hazards threatened different farm animals at different times and how the insurers attempted to turn these hazards into insurable risks. The dynamic nature of insurance products, subject to perpetual adaptation, emerges as a pivotal facet of insurers’ endeavours to manage the risks inherent in lives of farm animals. Animal insurance records illuminate shifting patterns of farm animal maladies, but also highlight the changing significance of these hazards within agricultural production and human-animal relationships in general.