Post by Joann on May 25, 2006 12:05:34 GMT -5
Our dear Debbie in Arkansas sent this account (Joann)
I will re-post her photo link on another post. She is not confident of this one.
s2.photobucket.com/albums/y14/homesteadmom/Fancy%20and%20Rachel/
I am writing my story of Fancy and her calving in hopes that this might help someone, someday by learning from my experience. First, a brief history. Fancy has successfully calved 3 times and is approx. 5 ½ years old. She has very silent heats which are hard to detect, but a little easier when she has a calf around. I had her AI'd August 2nd and it appeared it didn't take since last year's calf was seen mounting her while she stood several times. My neighbor and I share milk. I gave him last year's heifer and in return he shares a lot of work, plus he put in a gate and they graze his lawn and grows them a patch of winter grasses. I took a job in November and we went to once a day milking, with my neighbor, Dale, milking each morning and me just feeding her at 5:30pm each night when I got home. I recalled the AI man when she appeared to be in heat. Dale locked her up for the AI man the morning of December 1st. AI guy couldn't clean her poo out cause she bowed up and tightened down. He asked Dale is he was sure she was in heat, he said yeah, we think so, so he AI'd her and left. After this we never saw her stand and let the calf mount anymore. We figured the due date to be around August.
Fast forward to mid march. She weaned the calf and was giving 4-5 gallons for a short time then appeared to be drying up fast. The milk became very salty and beige colored. Undrinkable beside ugly. I bought 3 dry cow treat infusions and Dale used them. She was in such poor health and Dale was very worried since the front teat was milking blood now. April 19 I had a hysterectomy and was unable to do much. Dale came to me worried. April 23rd or so we called out a large animal vet Dale had used to give his calf her immunizations. He said she was definitely in calf. We said she was AI'd Dec 1st and he said that sounded right to him. He said he could just bounce the calf enough to feel it thru a rectal exam. He said to give her 25 cc penicillin shots for 5 days and another round of teat infusions and do not milk her any more till she calved. We really didn’t trust this vet since he told us he didn't have any dairy experience and avoided dealing with them in training. Dale actually gave the 25cc pen shots for 11 days till the large bottle was emptied. She did appear to regain much of her health. She was at least happy again. Before the shots, she would stand and rest her head against a tree for hours like she was miserable.
Well we knew she might still have that mastitis yuck in her teats and I really didn't like the idea of leaving her unmilked for months. I was worried what we might find coming out of her teats when she did calve. We waited and worried, but she seemed to be better, in comparison to how sick she had been. Now May 5 her udder began looking horribly tight up high. Dale tried to milk her out, she looked so tight. The milk wouldn't drop and he only got the same ucky brown stuff. We discussed oxytocin and other ways to make it drop, sure this would cause a major life threatening disease if left inside for 4 more months. I desperately e-mailed Joann. She agreed the milk should come out and told me the oxytocin would abort the calf. She also warned that since she had been so sick she might very likely abort anyway. Next morning before anything else was done she was in full labor. The strange thing was her bag and teats were as full as I have ever seen them. We prepared for a miscarriage. Then my husband and Dale began wondering about the first AI...maybe it took. I searched for cancelled checks and counted day, it was now 282 days since the first AI. We had a burst of hope but dare not hope too much. She calved at 6pm in dales lush green lawn, a pretty little heifer obviously full term. Fancy drank a pint of molasses in 5 gallons of water and ate some grain. Fancy cleaned the little heifer calf up an hour or so while Dale milked out each quarter till he got the beige yuck out and a creamy yellow colostrum like milk pouring out. The baby nursed a tiny bit of this with much assistance while we thawed 2 liters of great colostrum saved from March 29, 2005 when Georgia was born. I tasted it and it was fine, no freezer taste. We got all this down the calf plus some Dale had also saved. By 9:30 Fancy was down with milk fever. The calf was bouncing about this time. We gave her a tube of calcium paste.We gave her a tube of calcium paste and called a different vet, different in name only! He assures me she will be fine and doesn't need an IV Calcium infusion tho I requested one. I ask will she need more paste during the night and he said NO WAY, she will be fine tonight. Fancy stood soon after he arrived and basically he chatted and went home. We stayed with her until 1:30 am,helping the calf nurse and watching her closely as she slowly improved. We slept 4 hours, but at 5:30am we found her down, apparently she had been down a while from the hoof flailing marks. We gave her 2 tubes of calcium. She started rattling louder and louder while we rocked her side to side to keep the burping up. 3 times we cried and told her goodbye when she could no longer hold her head up. It was so heart wrenching, she was giving up and so was I. It took 3 hours for the paste to work, then she wasn't well, just able to stand. The vets here do not have slings, they said only farmers use them.....ugh! Finally I went to the house and called the vet's office back and told them to send the next available person who could do and iv drip and to send them flying. I had to explain to the receptionist thru my tears that this was not any old cow in a field, but a true family pet loved as much as any dog or cat up there at the office! We got the vet(this is vet #3 now) who worked his way thru college on a dairy. He was very intelligent and frank. I thank God for his arrival. He is the same vet who rushed here early one morning to pull Georgia when she was breach and stuck! He said her chance of survival is 25% or less. He said really he doubted she pulled thru due to the low temperature and the time spent on the ground. He gave her a shot for the rattle in her lungs and left me with 2 more. He said liver failure killed one of their dairy's best cows because she went down and wasn't found for several hours. He did a IV drip into her triangle on her right, the peritoneum(sp) space. He said her heart rate was much to rapid for a jugular infusion. He asked to buy the calf if she doesn't make it. I said no, of course.
Well after letting the calf nurse her while she was in the headgate, we released her. She drank a lot of water. She came back full strength and even ran across the field to get back in greener pastures, with calf and Georgia keeping up. Right now she looks fine, but we are loaded with calcium iv's and paste for the inevitable. If she pulls thru it will be by the grace of God. We have prayed so much for her recovery. The vet said if the calcium ever failed to work she will die and nothing more can be done. Fancy grazed and ate grain all that day and was more attentive to her calf. She was too hoarse to moo correctly for weeks. Georgia believes it is her calf since she bonded so much with it while Fancy was in a milk fever daze. We locked Fancy in the headgate and gave her the second shot of lung medicine, I forget what it was. My neighbor stripped her out and got 1 ½ gallons of milky colostrum. I went ahead and put the iv calcium into the peritonea?? cavity like the dairy vet did. I truly feel this helped the recovery so much and I feared the stress of milking her out and giving her shots might cause the calcium to drop overnite. It is a much easier way of giving calcium than the paste. She despises the paste and I didn't want anything to slow her grazing down. She ate the whole time we had her in the headgate. She had another good day tho her ears were cooling and her attention to the calf waned so for her last shot of lung antibiotic, I also put another jug of 23% iv solution into her side again. This was the last iv we gave of calcium. She has steadily improved and now you would never know she had been so near deaths doors. It was 30 long hours when it could have went either way. God surely heard our prayers for her and I am very thankful she is well. I have no intentions of breeding her back for several years. Georgia will be bred next and then Rachel can be put in service. I want Fancy to have a nice long break to regain perfect health.
I will re-post her photo link on another post. She is not confident of this one.
s2.photobucket.com/albums/y14/homesteadmom/Fancy%20and%20Rachel/
I am writing my story of Fancy and her calving in hopes that this might help someone, someday by learning from my experience. First, a brief history. Fancy has successfully calved 3 times and is approx. 5 ½ years old. She has very silent heats which are hard to detect, but a little easier when she has a calf around. I had her AI'd August 2nd and it appeared it didn't take since last year's calf was seen mounting her while she stood several times. My neighbor and I share milk. I gave him last year's heifer and in return he shares a lot of work, plus he put in a gate and they graze his lawn and grows them a patch of winter grasses. I took a job in November and we went to once a day milking, with my neighbor, Dale, milking each morning and me just feeding her at 5:30pm each night when I got home. I recalled the AI man when she appeared to be in heat. Dale locked her up for the AI man the morning of December 1st. AI guy couldn't clean her poo out cause she bowed up and tightened down. He asked Dale is he was sure she was in heat, he said yeah, we think so, so he AI'd her and left. After this we never saw her stand and let the calf mount anymore. We figured the due date to be around August.
Fast forward to mid march. She weaned the calf and was giving 4-5 gallons for a short time then appeared to be drying up fast. The milk became very salty and beige colored. Undrinkable beside ugly. I bought 3 dry cow treat infusions and Dale used them. She was in such poor health and Dale was very worried since the front teat was milking blood now. April 19 I had a hysterectomy and was unable to do much. Dale came to me worried. April 23rd or so we called out a large animal vet Dale had used to give his calf her immunizations. He said she was definitely in calf. We said she was AI'd Dec 1st and he said that sounded right to him. He said he could just bounce the calf enough to feel it thru a rectal exam. He said to give her 25 cc penicillin shots for 5 days and another round of teat infusions and do not milk her any more till she calved. We really didn’t trust this vet since he told us he didn't have any dairy experience and avoided dealing with them in training. Dale actually gave the 25cc pen shots for 11 days till the large bottle was emptied. She did appear to regain much of her health. She was at least happy again. Before the shots, she would stand and rest her head against a tree for hours like she was miserable.
Well we knew she might still have that mastitis yuck in her teats and I really didn't like the idea of leaving her unmilked for months. I was worried what we might find coming out of her teats when she did calve. We waited and worried, but she seemed to be better, in comparison to how sick she had been. Now May 5 her udder began looking horribly tight up high. Dale tried to milk her out, she looked so tight. The milk wouldn't drop and he only got the same ucky brown stuff. We discussed oxytocin and other ways to make it drop, sure this would cause a major life threatening disease if left inside for 4 more months. I desperately e-mailed Joann. She agreed the milk should come out and told me the oxytocin would abort the calf. She also warned that since she had been so sick she might very likely abort anyway. Next morning before anything else was done she was in full labor. The strange thing was her bag and teats were as full as I have ever seen them. We prepared for a miscarriage. Then my husband and Dale began wondering about the first AI...maybe it took. I searched for cancelled checks and counted day, it was now 282 days since the first AI. We had a burst of hope but dare not hope too much. She calved at 6pm in dales lush green lawn, a pretty little heifer obviously full term. Fancy drank a pint of molasses in 5 gallons of water and ate some grain. Fancy cleaned the little heifer calf up an hour or so while Dale milked out each quarter till he got the beige yuck out and a creamy yellow colostrum like milk pouring out. The baby nursed a tiny bit of this with much assistance while we thawed 2 liters of great colostrum saved from March 29, 2005 when Georgia was born. I tasted it and it was fine, no freezer taste. We got all this down the calf plus some Dale had also saved. By 9:30 Fancy was down with milk fever. The calf was bouncing about this time. We gave her a tube of calcium paste.We gave her a tube of calcium paste and called a different vet, different in name only! He assures me she will be fine and doesn't need an IV Calcium infusion tho I requested one. I ask will she need more paste during the night and he said NO WAY, she will be fine tonight. Fancy stood soon after he arrived and basically he chatted and went home. We stayed with her until 1:30 am,helping the calf nurse and watching her closely as she slowly improved. We slept 4 hours, but at 5:30am we found her down, apparently she had been down a while from the hoof flailing marks. We gave her 2 tubes of calcium. She started rattling louder and louder while we rocked her side to side to keep the burping up. 3 times we cried and told her goodbye when she could no longer hold her head up. It was so heart wrenching, she was giving up and so was I. It took 3 hours for the paste to work, then she wasn't well, just able to stand. The vets here do not have slings, they said only farmers use them.....ugh! Finally I went to the house and called the vet's office back and told them to send the next available person who could do and iv drip and to send them flying. I had to explain to the receptionist thru my tears that this was not any old cow in a field, but a true family pet loved as much as any dog or cat up there at the office! We got the vet(this is vet #3 now) who worked his way thru college on a dairy. He was very intelligent and frank. I thank God for his arrival. He is the same vet who rushed here early one morning to pull Georgia when she was breach and stuck! He said her chance of survival is 25% or less. He said really he doubted she pulled thru due to the low temperature and the time spent on the ground. He gave her a shot for the rattle in her lungs and left me with 2 more. He said liver failure killed one of their dairy's best cows because she went down and wasn't found for several hours. He did a IV drip into her triangle on her right, the peritoneum(sp) space. He said her heart rate was much to rapid for a jugular infusion. He asked to buy the calf if she doesn't make it. I said no, of course.
Well after letting the calf nurse her while she was in the headgate, we released her. She drank a lot of water. She came back full strength and even ran across the field to get back in greener pastures, with calf and Georgia keeping up. Right now she looks fine, but we are loaded with calcium iv's and paste for the inevitable. If she pulls thru it will be by the grace of God. We have prayed so much for her recovery. The vet said if the calcium ever failed to work she will die and nothing more can be done. Fancy grazed and ate grain all that day and was more attentive to her calf. She was too hoarse to moo correctly for weeks. Georgia believes it is her calf since she bonded so much with it while Fancy was in a milk fever daze. We locked Fancy in the headgate and gave her the second shot of lung medicine, I forget what it was. My neighbor stripped her out and got 1 ½ gallons of milky colostrum. I went ahead and put the iv calcium into the peritonea?? cavity like the dairy vet did. I truly feel this helped the recovery so much and I feared the stress of milking her out and giving her shots might cause the calcium to drop overnite. It is a much easier way of giving calcium than the paste. She despises the paste and I didn't want anything to slow her grazing down. She ate the whole time we had her in the headgate. She had another good day tho her ears were cooling and her attention to the calf waned so for her last shot of lung antibiotic, I also put another jug of 23% iv solution into her side again. This was the last iv we gave of calcium. She has steadily improved and now you would never know she had been so near deaths doors. It was 30 long hours when it could have went either way. God surely heard our prayers for her and I am very thankful she is well. I have no intentions of breeding her back for several years. Georgia will be bred next and then Rachel can be put in service. I want Fancy to have a nice long break to regain perfect health.