A New Year, A New Experience

So now we come to yesterday and today's events. Yesterday was recovery (for Jared) and catching up on things that needed to be done. We mucked out the horse stalls (which had some accumulation due to snow and our poor barn design), and filled up the truck with a load of firewood from my grandfathers. We brought in two stacks of wood into his basement, hopefully enough to keep him for a month or so before we need to do some more. We try to bring it in so he doesn't have to go outside to keep his furnace burning- we all worry about him falling or catching cold. He is still an active old guy in his 70's, and hunts, fishes, crabs, gunsmiths, you name it. But as the years progress, he gets out a little less and if we can make his life a little easier, we certainly try. Once we got him all taken care of, we took our load up to the house and stacked it in our basement. We had an innovative little system going on... Jared parked the truck at the top of our basement steps, and we put a wheelbarrow at the bottom. He tossed wood into the wheelbarrow, and when it was full I wheeled it in and stacked it, while he pulled out the next wheelbarrowfull from the back of the truck. We got it finished in about half an hour, so it wasn't too bad. Finally, we headed over to my neighbor's so I could  take care of his horses for the night. Boy was I tired when we finally got home. After a hot shower and some of my grandmother's soup, I was out like a light.

My alarm went off at 6:30 am and I headed out to get the house full of animals fed and taken care of before heading over to Dr. C's at 8 am. We jumped in the truck and headed out for our first herd check, at a decent sized farm not too farm down the road from him. We preg-checked about 30 heifers, many of whom had not taken from the last breeding. Only about half or less were pregnant. Two of the cows appeared to have calves about 35 days old... which the farmers didn't have records of them having been bred at that time. So that was pretty bizarre, especially since Dr. C. said everything felt completely normal in them. There were two uterus infusions that I got to see, with tetracycline being flushed in for antibiotic purposes. They put a long hollow tube into the uterus, and Dr. C. feels out where the end should go based on the infection and status of the uterus. There was a mild incident that occurred that really sunk into me how dangerous cows can be. Dr. C. was in the chute, and the farmer wasn't paying attention (and nor was I, since I was watching Dr. C.!). Another cow butted her way in and shoved Dr. C. against the other cow and the gate. He was getting squeezed with his arm still stuck in another cow. It was terrifying. They managed to get the one cow back enough so that no damage was done, but I'm sure his rib cage will hurt a bit tomorrow from being pancaked.

We also ended up doing a different type of dehorning at this farm. These owners did most of the cauterizing dehorning themselves, numbing the calves first with Lidocaine. However, they had let about 10 of the calves get too big, and they needed something more extreme than the cauterizer. So I got to see something a little different. Dr. C. numbed the calves' heads, and then we went down the line with what I call "scoops." I held each calf's head down for him, and he used these tools essentially like giant pliers, to cut around the calf's horns, taking some scalp along with it to make sure all of the horn-producing cells were removed. He then pulled on each of the four main arteries that run around the horn, until they snapped off under the surface, where the pressure of the tissue would cause them to stop bleeding. To doubly ensure that the cow's didn't bleed out (though he assured me that this was extremely rare), the farmers went behind us and cauterized the area with the heat dehorner. One of the calves, who had abnormally large horns for her age, also had these strange holes left behind after we removed her horns- these were actually her sinuses!
 The calves could hardly feel any of it (as you could tell from their lack of struggle), which made me feel a bit better than some of the earlier dehorning, where they are thrashing and bleating plaintively (yeah, I'm a wuss).

The next farm we headed to was for a cow who needed to be "cleaned." That is, she had calved on Friday and not all of her afterbirth had come out. She was a little weak in the hind end and we couldn't get her up due to slippery floor conditions, and since it was just Dr. C. and me (the farmers weren't around), he did as much as he could with her lying down. He pulled out a lot of her afterbirth (which smelled pretty bad), and cleaned her up. He also put in some antibacterial "pills" which were each the size of his thumb. They would dissolve in the uterus and keep infection down.

Our last call was to do some more foot work on a cow with an ulcer. Dr. C. cleaned her up and bandaged her foot, and then we headed back to the office. We were done by twelve thirty, and I was home by 1, quite an early day!

Tomorrow I am going in to the small animal hospital in the morning, then having lunch with an old, dear friend and his significant other, whom I'm excited to meet. He goes to Mizzou, and so does she. In the afternoon I'm heading up to go help out at my stepfather's new building that his business is expanding into. I should be helping with some wall painting and whatever else they need! So it should certainly be a fast-paced day.

Hope you have a wonderful evening,  and thanks for taking the time to read my rants! I hope someone out there is getting something out of it. If anyone ever has any corrections, clarifications or questions, I would love to hear them.

Thanks!

~Melissa