Up To My Knees in Cowshit

We are coming to the end of the second week of calving for the pregnant cow and calf study. It seems like the original estimates of the vet as to due date were off (it's an imprecise art at best, I gather) and the cows are popping out calves left and right a week or more before they were expected. We really scrambled the first week as many of the operational details had not been sorted out.

Newborn calves are like any other newborn mammal: kind of flattened, covered in sticky fluids, and not very pretty. The mother licks her calf dry and they fluff up quickly. Most are on their feet in 15-30 minutes after being born. Amazing.

There is an astonishing number of moving parts involved in this project. First, the 45 pregnant cows, which will eventually become 45 cows and 45 calves (we only keep them at the barn for 48 hours after a calf is born then they are transported back to the OSU beef cow farm). A supervisor has to be at the barn at all times; our shifts range from 4 to 6 hours long. Students in the calving class come for a couple of hours. In theory, their overlapping shifts should cover the entire 24 hours of the day but shifts after midnight are not often taken. I signed up for all but a handful of the 2am to 6am supervisor shifts and for the most part I am at the barn with only one or two students during that time. Sometimes I'm all by myself.

The barn at 3am. All is quiet.

Students in the calving class might have some experience with cows or they might have no experience at all--maybe they saw some cows on TV once. I find it quite interesting that the students with the most experience, those who did 4H, whose families raise beef cattle or have a dairy farm, question everything. They simply can't understand why we would do a particular thing a particular way because "that's not how we do it at home." And that is exactly the point. This is a scientific research study. Of course we don't manage the cows the way a ranch would. Cows have been assigned to specific dietary treatments. Calves have blood draws every 12 hours. Calves are weighed before and after nursing. No rancher who wanted to remain a rancher would manage cows that way. So we get lots of push back from the students with experience. I've tried over and over to explain the objectives of the study and why we have to manage the cows and calves this one way and this way only in order to get data that would meet those objectives, but some of the students simply don't get it.

Stormy was born on my shift. She's the only all white calf so far (we expect one more). It was raining the night she was born. Her name is meant to be ironic. She was not quite ready to stand up when I took this photo less than 15 minutes after she was born.

In contrast, the students with the least experience are often the most willing workers. They dive right in, eager for the experience. They ask questions not to challenge but to learn more. They remain cheerful even in the face of some pretty hectic moments. I've certainly got my favorites among them.

Sleepy calf. Some of the female students are just slips of girls that barely outweigh the calves but you should never underestimate them. Tough, just like the calves.

I've continued to learn too. My successes give me confidence that the vet school decision isn't folly.

For example, I was shown how to draw blood on calves one way. You haul the calf out of the pen. Mother begins to howl, loudly and often. You either carry or crabwalk the calf to the table (calves have "go" buttons on their butts but sometimes they are just so sleepy that they won't walk on their own no matter what). You grab their front feet, another student grabs their hind feet, and you flip "little" calf, who might weigh anywhere from 65 to 85 pounds, onto its side on the ground or a pile of hay if it is convenient. One student lays across the calf's hind quarters, holding hind legs with one hand, front legs with the other. You will hold the calf's head just so, tilting it to the side and up just so. It's quite a piece of theater. 

Holding the calf the old-fashioned way. I told them to lift their heads and smile. Normally they are trying to get out of the way of the person drawing the blood. You can see what a small space you have to work in.

Then I kneel down next to the tiny bit of calf that isn't covered by students, look for the jugular pulse, jam my hand into the base of the calf's neck (and I do mean jam), let the vein fill, then feel for the vein with the other hand to make sure I know where it is located and what its diameter is. I might release the pressure of my jamming hand then put it back to make sure that I'm feeling the jugular vein and not a bit of connective tissue or, dog forbid, the artery. Only the vein will fill when you jab your hand in and relax when you release the pressure. There is a lot of small variability in the physiology so that if you don't pay attention, you are going to miss the vein entirely, nick the vein, or push the needle all the way through it. The latter two will result in a hematoma that can make getting another blood sample from that side of the calf's neck very difficult. If you don't pay attention, you might blow the vacuum on the sample collection tube and have to get a new one. If you don't pay attention, you might have to jab the calf's neck again. And again. And again. Every jab of the needle makes it that much duller so after three or four failed pokes, you need to replace it. For all these reasons, I never insert the needle until I am absolutely sure I know where the vein is and where I want the needle to go into it. My goal is "one and done." Plus, let's be clear, it hurts the calf to be stuck repeatedly with a large, dull needle in the neck. I visualize the vein in my mind and with my fingers. 

The cuvette is a plastic cup with a threaded tip at one end (not shown). They are reused many, many times. You pull the grey cap off the needle and screw the needle into the cuvette. The yellow cap is what I pull off with my mouth. This exposes the needle that we push into the calf's neck. The grey rubber bit is covering a second needle. This is inserted into the vacuum sample collection tube after the main needle is in the vein, or rather, once the needle plus cuvette are in place, you push the vacuum tube up into the cuvette onto the second needle.

Once I am sure, I cannot hesitate. Using my mouth, I quickly uncap the needle that is screwed onto the cuvette, jab the needle into the vein then push the vacuum tube onto the other end of the needle, all with one hand because I can't let go of the pressure on the vein or I won't get enough blood to fill the tube. I am so good at this now that I can get the sample in one jab 9 times out of 10--so satisfying to see that beautiful venous blood shooting into the vacuum tube. Once this is over, you carry or crabwalk the calf back to the pen.

An aside about uncapping the needle with your mouth. That is of course not the "proper" way but it is the "operational reality" way to do it. The calf will only have just so much patience at being squished down on its side--you do not have an infinite amount of time to dither about collecting a blood sample. It is so critical to press on the vein at the base of the neck that once people have a good inflation of the vein, they usually don't move that jamming hand until they are done. So how else are you going to get the cap off that needle but with your mouth? The needles are sterile as long as they are capped but we often put extra tubes and needles in our pockets or on the ground next to us so the exteriors of the things are far from clean. Animal science is not for the squeamish, that's for sure.

But there is a a much better way to get blood from a calf that I learned about yesterday. It only takes two people, not three, and it is less stressful on the mother and calf, less stressful on the calf holders, and much less stressful on us novice vampires. It's still theater but it is more like a short vignette instead of a three-act play.

You and I go into the pen. The calf will most likely be sleeping. Even if it is walking around, this will still work. You will straddle the calf around its shoulders, kneeling on the ground if it is lying down, standing and squeezing it in your knees if it is standing. There is a near 100% probability that you will have to kneel in a fresh pile of cowshit. Then you take its head and pull it straight back against you, exposing its throat. The whiff of ritual sacrifice is strong, that's for sure. I will then kneel down (also into a fresh pile of shit), gently press my thumb into the jugular just above the scapula, and repeat the other steps above. In this position, the jugular is much more obvious, it fills with much less pressure against the neck, and it is much less likely to roll between connective tissue when you push the needle into it.

Two of my favorite student workers. James in fact encouraged me to try the "kneeling" method for drawing blood after he helped another supervisor do it in a pen the day before. Knowledge transfer in its most perfect form. Remember, these two young people are with me in a cow barn at 4 in the morning. Dedication.

This method takes tens of seconds while the other method can take up to 15 minutes per calf. And with this method, we are still in the pen with the mother. Usually mother cow will sniff at us and her calf but otherwise she is not too stressed (these cows are kept at OSU for research; they are not wild range cows). The angle of insertion of the needle is a bit different with this method so today I had to jab the calf twice before I hit the vein properly. 

A final comment on that squeamish thing. I have no problems with all sorts of unspeakably sticky fluids and viscosities of shit. I have no problems jabbing large needles into the jugular veins of animals. But there is one thing that I have so far refused to do: tag the newborn calves in the ear. I understand why they must be tagged, they will live their entire life with that identification number. But the tagging gun looks like some medieval instrument of torture and I just cannot make myself use it. Instead, I turn it into a learning moment for my student helpers. We are all learning, after all.

Those tags will be in their ears for years before they have to be replaced.