Silver
Well-known member
Evening of Mar. 31 I put a second calver in the chute that was in distress. Upon inspection I found a tail so figured it was just a matter of straightening things out and pulling the calf out. But then I got confused. Tail seemed to be on backwards, and when I followed the hind legs down everything got weird, it seemed like below the hocks they went the wrong direction and I couldn't bring them around. I've been really tired lately calving in this weather, so allowed that I may have just been too foggy to make sense of it. But I was pretty sure it wasn't twins all tangled up. So off to the vet I went.
Because of the virus I was not allowed to watch the surgery so I told the vet that I thought we were dealing with a deformed calf that needed a c-section to come out. She said she would inspect. A short time later she came out to the truck and told me that it was not deformed, just backwards and she thought if she gave the cow an epidural she could straighten and pull it. I said good luck. She came back awhile later and said she could not straighten it and would need to do a c-section. Imagine that I thought. But I also thought that perhaps I had really lost my faculties.
Anyway, 4 hours later she woke me up to tell me the surgery was long and difficult, and that the calf was dead and deformed. This was disappointing, but on the other hand I felt a little vindicated.
And this time I did get a prescription for daily antibiotics because of the way the operation went.
I wish it was an April Fool's joke but it's not. This is what the calf looked like in the wheel barrow when they brought it out:
At home in better light:
Because of the virus I was not allowed to watch the surgery so I told the vet that I thought we were dealing with a deformed calf that needed a c-section to come out. She said she would inspect. A short time later she came out to the truck and told me that it was not deformed, just backwards and she thought if she gave the cow an epidural she could straighten and pull it. I said good luck. She came back awhile later and said she could not straighten it and would need to do a c-section. Imagine that I thought. But I also thought that perhaps I had really lost my faculties.
Anyway, 4 hours later she woke me up to tell me the surgery was long and difficult, and that the calf was dead and deformed. This was disappointing, but on the other hand I felt a little vindicated.
And this time I did get a prescription for daily antibiotics because of the way the operation went.
I wish it was an April Fool's joke but it's not. This is what the calf looked like in the wheel barrow when they brought it out:
At home in better light:
