The dairy cow selenium experiment continues to provide me with amazing opportunities to learn.
I went to the barn this morning for the regularly scheduled hay fluffing. I took some time to sweep up the main aisle (the evening feeders have been a bit lax in the housekeeping department). Before I left, I decided to make a nose-by-nose check on the cows.
Everything looked fine until I got to pen 10. One cow was laying down and a yellowish-pinkish mass was lumped under her tail. Pregnant cow, that can't be anything good, I thought. Then I realized that she had not come to the front of the pen when I fluffed up the hay. All of the cows RUN to grab the delicious leftover bits of alfalfa hay that I sweep up with the grass hay. But not this one.
I shooed her up and saw a meter-long piece of yellowish tissue, well vascularized, covered with large blood clots, hanging from her vulva. I suspected placenta, but I'm not even remotely close to being an expert.
I called the project PI, described the situation. She came right over to see for herself, said, yep, that's placenta and it looks like we are dealing with an abortion, then called half a dozen people. (If it was a person, it would have been called a miscarriage. But in cows, it is called an abortion.) But it was Saturday morning, the last weekend before classes start for the winter term, and, well, it was Saturday morning. We decided that we could do nothing and that the best option was to wait and see who returned her calls.
I went home to shower. Just as I was finishing up, she called to tell me that the emergency theriogenology team from the vet school would be at the barn in half an hour. I said, I will help in whatever way I can.
I put my barn clothes back on and zoomed back to campus. A few minutes after I arrived, a vet and a 4th year vet student arrived in a truck with a modified bed that contained enormous pull-out drawers filled with all of the drugs and equipment that might be needed for an emergency ruminant birthing situation. The PI showed up right after they arrived.
The next two hours are sort of a blur. I fetched several pails of hot water for them ("I don't know nothin' about birthin' babies") and followed the PI around while she did some hand-wringing and the vet was figuring out what the plan needed to be. But I was rewarded for my patience, rewarded for simply being there when the vet asked me to come into the pen and grab one of the chains and help the 4th-year student pull.
The first calf (there were two) had a condition called water belly. This means that fluid or possibly urine was accumulating in the body cavity, greatly extending the belly. The second calf was significantly undersized. Both calves were a month premature and stillborn.
No, I did not stick my arm up inside that cow. But I was about as close to the action as any 3rd or 4th year vet student could be.
Yes, there are photos. No, I will not post them. Go look on google if you are that prurient.
Yes, there were odors and sounds and lots and lots of different fluids of varying color and viscosity involved. I ended up throwing the leather gloves I was wearing into the trash bin in the barn. No, I was not grossed out. I was far more interested in the process. Once I was in the pen and up to my ankles in the brown goo comprised of cow poop and urine and cedar shaving litter (yay for muck boots) and holding onto one of the two chains, I didn't notice anything but the process. Pull, relax, vet repositions the calf, pull, relax. The vet student and I were side by side in the muck, holding the sticky handles at the ends of the chains, probably both hoping we wouldn't fall on our ass when the calf came out at last.
When it was all over and they untied the cow from her head harness, she went over to the two calves, laid out side by side in the muck, and licked at them and nudged them. That was very sad. She became distressed when we removed them from the pen, mooing and trying to get to them. Sad.
It might seem medieval to talk about chains and dead calves in the mud, but every brutal component was balanced by another action that was intended to preserve the health and welfare of the cow. She was not mistreated or abused. She was tended to within just a couple of hours after she began to abort the calves. She would have died if the vet had not been there to deal with the first calf with the fluid in its abdomen. The vet and the vet student used ample amounts of betadine, liters of it, actually. It was harsh but not unnecessarily so.
More money is spent on dairy cow reproduction than on any other aspect of any other domesticated animal. Fewer than 50% of fertilized eggs from dairy cows produce viable fetuses. The reason is that we genetically selected for cows that produce a lot of milk. But in the process, we unknowingly selected against the genes associated with reproductive fitness. Oops.
So I learned today that I can handle a fairly extreme and unexpected situation with some calmness. I learned that I may project some aspect of that calmness--I don't think the vet would have invited me into that pen otherwise. I got a first-hand view of large-animal veterinary medicine that I simply would never have been able to get before. Every one of these opportunities helps me figure out what I want to get out of this crazy plan to get a DVM.
And all I had to do was show up.
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