I’m still reeling over what happened on the recent Easter Sunday. It was early in the day when I trekked down to the barn to check on one of my heifers that was due to calve. I had been watching her carefully as we got closer to her due date. She wasn’t over-due. In fact, she was right on time. I had purposefully not made any Easter plans so I could be home if there was trouble. And indeed, there was trouble.
Her water broke at about 7:30 a.m. and I waited and waited for those two little hooves to start protruding, followed by a nose. She was very restless and kept walking around the farm. On and off, I followed her, not wanting to disturb her progress, but also to keep an eye on her. After an hour or two, no hooves and I started getting worried. She was a beautiful, healthy, heifer, not overweight, no health problems, and I just couldn’t get my head around the fact that nothing was normal about her inability to progress. I kept telling myself, “give her time, leave her alone, heifers can be slow to calve”. I had taken a picture of the contents of her water breaking, and sure enough it was what I thought it was.
This would be the sixth calf born on this farm, so while not a large number, it was enough experience for me to know things were not progressing as planned. Mid-morning, I started to panic and messaged a couple of friends who are experienced cow people and knew my cows and farm well. Both were in church and their phones were off. An hour later, one replied, “Do you want us to come over?” But, by that time I had called the On-Call Emergency Veterinarian. They were short-staffed, but a Vet got here within half an hour. I had told the Emergency line that I thought we might be dealing with a breech calf, but only one vet could come, and no offense, but “she” was a woman. More about that later. Time was ticking. I told my friends that the Vet was on the way, but they said, “Please call us if you need us. We will come. We probably have more experience than the Vet.”
When the Vet got here, I realized that I was probably going to lose the calf and if nothing was done pretty soon, that I would lose the cow, too. The heifer took one look at the Vet, got spooked, and she bolted. For the life of me, I could not get her to come back in and into the chute. To give perspective, I’m a small person and I can in no way argue with a 1,400-to-1,500-pound animal. I didn’t have a good cattle-sorting setup – no lanes and gates to guide and force the cow into the chute. She took off with the lead rope trailing. My hands had a slight rope burn.
The vet told me that if I could get her trailered and transport her to their alternate facility, they could handle it. That facility is about 1-2 hours away. Well, I had loaned my trailer out since I wasn’t needing it (I’ll fix that problem), and I didn’t think I could get her trailered by myself anyway. A needless waste of time, and it sounded like they would do a C-section. A very bad choice, because while it might save the life of the cow, assuming the calf had already died, there was a 50/50 chance she would breed back and carry another calf to term. And the vet left, making me promise to update her. Things were looking very black.
I messaged my good friends again, explaining, and they said they would load up gates and supplies and be right over with their trailer. That took some time. When they got here, they quickly constructed lanes, gates, and got all the cows in, then shoo’d out the ones they didn’t want, and finally got that heifer into the chute. It went pretty quickly, all things considered – that was done in minutes, not hours. That’s when the work actually began and I knew that the goal was to save the heifer. Too many hours had passed already, and the time was too late to save the calf. I was enveloped in a mixture of sadness, hope, despair, and thankfulness. Hard to explain, but I was very grateful for their expertise, their willingness to come over, devastated that I had not acted sooner, devastated that the calf would probably not make it, and trying to reconcile myself to that fact without completely losing it. I had to stay calm.
My friends are Christians, a farming couple, and have decades of dairy cow experience. They had all the supplies we would need: long-armed vet OB gloves, disinfectant, lubricant, various medications, OB chains, and ratchet straps. As they began, I realized that the husband was the one with deep experience pulling calves. And it took a strong man to get the calf out without harming the heifer. I consider that a miracle in and of itself. The calf was in a horrible position and it could not be born normally. It wasn’t breech, but its head was turned back and tucked behind the heifer’s pelvic bone; the feet were tucked under rather than facing straight out and forward. The feet had to be straightened out, and the head unstuck. I think we estimated the heifer calf to be give or take 60lbs, so this was no small feat. And, by the way, that is not an over-sized calf for a large Guernsey cow or heifer to deliver.
I estimated that they worked on that poor heifer more than two hours, manipulating the calf, turning it, pulling it at the exact right time, trying to get the calf lined up properly to deliver. They were as fast as you could be, but so careful. We all prayed as we worked. My job was to keep giving the heifer handfuls of grain and calm her. I could do little more than that. God bless that heifer. She never cried out. Only one time did she let out a deep groan. I felt so bad for her, what with 2 and sometimes 3 arms inside of her.
What I admired most about this couple is they did not give up. They did not curse. They did not blame me for wrecking their Easter Sunday. They did not tell me to put the heifer down. They were calm, methodical, focused, and dedicated to the task of saving the heifer. It took all they both had to deliver that calf. There’s no way a lone female vet would have had the strength to do that. It would have taken a team and a team was not available when I needed it. Not their fault. It’s just how it was. I do not blame my veterinarians.
When the calf was finally delivered, they lifted it up by its back legs to get the fluid out of its lungs, smacking its sides to revive it and get all the fluid out as quickly as possible, and the husband even tried giving it mouth to mouth resuscitation. My heart was breaking at the sight of the most beautiful and well formed heifer calf, and breaking because they wouldn’t quit trying to save it. I finally said, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”, and they laid her down. I took a picture to remember her. Shortly afterwards, the afterbirth came tumbling out. It had detached long ago. The good news in that moment was that the afterbirth was sufficiently intact, and the heifer had no bleeding, and had not experienced any tears that we know of. She could have very well bled-out at that point. She could have been torn with all the manipulation. They offered to take care of burying the heifer calf for me. We let the mom eat the afterbirth, as cows do, and knew it would give her nutrition, and help her hormonally.
After removing the calf, we turned the cow out to pasture, praying that she would not then die from all the trauma or internal bleeding we could not see. We all prayed, hugged, dismantled the lanes and gates, packed up their trailer, and off they went after giving me good advice for the days to come. I was numb. All in all, the entire process from the beginning of the early morning water breaking, to them leaving, had been 12 hours and the sun was going down. It was 7:30 p.m..
There was nothing more I could do but clean up, try to find something to eat, and go to bed. What a horrible day. Before I could do that, I needed to call the Vet to update her, and order some pain medication, antibiotics for just in case a uterine infection started up, and also antibiotics for potential mastitis since there was no calf to start nursing her right away. I slept as if I were dead.
The next morning I was able to pick up the medications as soon as they opened at 8 a.m.. They had charged me for the after hours emergency vet call, but they substantially discounted it, which I appreciated. As soon as I got home, I prepared to milk out the cow by sterilizing milking equipment and gathering supplies. I thought the cow would never “speak” to me again or come in, but she did. She tolerated the milking process as well as could be expected since she had never been milked before and she’s a “kicker”. The following day was better, and the day after that, etc. She actually realized that being cleaned up with warm, soapy, water felt really good. She’s already showing up at the milking gate before I call her in. I consider that a miracle too. She was so sore, at first, it was hard to walk, to get up, to lay down, but she has grazed the grass, eaten hay, drank water, and each day she looks a little better as we try to get into the swing of being a milk cow.
I have gone through the scenario of Easter Sunday a thousand times in my head, talked to a few cow friends, and worked through all “my mistakes”. I heard of another farm who also had an Easter Sunday emergency. The cow had to be put down and I’m not sure the calf made it. I’m not the only one. Time will tell if this heifer, (now cow), continues to heal and is able to be bred back. I am taking the utmost care of her.
And another thing. This wasn’t just any calf. I had high hopes for this purebred Guernsey, A2A2, heifer calf. It was some work to order the special semen from a particular Guernsey bull, get my heifer bred back via A.I. on the right schedule, and wait 287 days for that calf to arrive. The calf would have been the first purebred Guernsey heifer to be born on this farm. My other cows are not bred back similarly. I have had some “Come to Jesus” meetings with myself about putting my hopes into something rather than Jesus. Sometimes, we will idolize something or someone and we don’t even realize that we are doing it. It could be possessions or people. I was absolutely idolizing the calf-to-be, and it was part of my financial plan to be breeding this particular kind of cow. It was absolutely a big loss for me. So… What now? I need to put my trust and hope in the Lord, first and always. I will continue breeding cows for the absolutely best results as long as I am able. I will continue, Lord willing, but more humbly now.