Calf 1 - Sugar's

My first calf was not due until March 10.  But Sugar had a problem.  Thursday morning I saw that she had a fluid sac hanging out her back end.  When I seen that before that usually meant the cow was getting close to giving birth.   I herded Sugar into the south corral with the heifers (calves from last year) and herded Speckles out to the main corral.

Dan stopped by around noon for payment for the corral panels I had bought from him.  He looked at Sugar and he remarked the fluid color was darker than normal as the water is usually lighter looking.  Donna stopped by in the afternoon and looked also.

I kept an eye on Sugar all day.  It was time for a new large hay bale, and with a Winter storm forecast for Friday, I scraped snow away in an area in the north pasture where the hayshed and Curtis's building would provide a windbreak.  Since I started scraping snow I decided to scrape the snow out of the main corral and dump the snow in the pastures.  At the end of the day I started to scrape snow out of the south corral.  I got as far a removing the snow east and south of the barn and a little west of the barn and the covered area.  The heifers were a pain as sometimes they swarmed around as I scraped the snow and I had to watch not to hit them.  It was dark when I finished scraping a path to the feeder in the NE pasture at 7:30 pm.

February has been a miserable month. It was the fifth snowiest February at 23.3 inches. (The record is 31 inches).  The normal snow amount is 8.5 inches. It was the second coldest February on record with an average of 12.6 degrees.  Our normal average is around 27 degrees. I want my global warming back!!!

Friday I cleaned the manure and old straw out of the barn's covered area and put fresh straw down for the heifers and Sugar.  Sugar was still the same.

It had been a day with no change in her condition.  It was Friday afternoon and the Winter storm was starting up.  Rather than waiting for the weekend I decided to call the cattle vet for advice.  It was after 4 pm when she called me back.  From my description she had concerns.  I emailed the above two photos and she said we had to do something now as it appeared the cow's placenta had detached prematurely.

In one study two cases of premature expulsion of the placenta were recorded among 60 supervised calvings (3.3 per cent); both calves died. In a second study, 47 cases were recorded among 332 cases of perinatal mortality (14.2 per cent). The condition was associated with fetal malpresentation and malposture, and mortality either before or during parturition. There was no significant relationship between the occurrence of premature expulsion of the placenta and parity, calving difficulty, previous calving history or the sex of the calf. The condition in cattle is compared with placenta praevia in women.

I had to put Sugar in the head gate to hold her while we pulled the calf out of her.  That meant I had to shovel the snow out of the loading ramp to get Sugar into the head gate.  The vet arrived as I was finishing the shoveling.  Most of the other cattle were in the loafing shed to get out of the wind and blowing snow.   By now the wind was blowing 26 mph with gusts to 36 mph with snow falling.  A real Winter storm going into blizzard category.

When the vet drove into the corral the cattle got nervous.  It then wasn't too hard to herd them out of the corral and out to the hay bale.  This made getting Sugar into the loafing corral and head gate much easier as she wasn't distracted by the other cattle.

The vet reached in and removed the placenta.  She found the calf had one leg bent and not facing out.  That "malposture" perhaps explains the premature placenta expulsion.  Surprisingly the calf was still alive.  She repositioned the bent leg and hooked chains to each leg and we pulled.  Our action helped trigger Sugar and she started to have contractions.  We slowly pulled the calf out trying to time our pulling with her contractions.

Once out the vet drug the calf to Sugar's face so she could see, smell and lick the calf and start the bonding.  Then she drug the calf over to the barn's covered area and the straw.  I let Sugar out of the head gate to join her calf.  In the end I had to handle the metal gates as when the vet tried her wet bloody hands would stick to the metal.

Since this was a premature birth the vet gave Sugar a shot of medicine to help her clean out and start her milk to drop to her udder.  She said the calf may have suffered some oxygen loss and to watch her.

It was now 5:45 pm.  The calf was dry and out of the wind.  The air temperature was 12 degrees.  I checked on him at 7 pm and 8 pm.  At 7 pm he appeared to have moved position but no signs he had drunk.  I moved him more into the corner.  Sugar was laying next to him.  At 8 pm the calf was still laying stretched out.  One heifer was standing too close to the calf and I shooed her away.  No signs the calf had drunk and it appeared Sugar's milk had dropped and her udder was full.

I needed to get the calf up to drink and needed help to do that.  The blizzard was raging.  I called Donna for help.  She was snowed in.  I drove three miles in my four-wheel drive pickup and got her.  Only a few vehicles were on the road and they were driving slowly and carefully through the storm as it was hard to see the road.

The air temperature was now 5 degrees. I got the calf into the barn where we had more light.  Normally the cattle want to get in the barn where all the hay bales are located and I can never leave the door open briefly.  Sugar didn't want to go inside the barn.  She would stand at the door and call to her calf.  When I tried to herd her inside she would turn and move away.  Donna - an unfamiliar person - also unnerved Sugar.  After more than a half hour I got Sugar inside the barn.

The calf was too weak to stand.  When I tried to stand him up I realized he was too weak to suck.  I put Sugar back outside the barn.  I called Chris for advice and whether he had a milk supplement as I had none.  He said he would use milk from the grocery as a starter for energy.  Just warm the milk to body temperature.  I got a bottle and nipple but the calf was too weak to suck.  I found the bag and plastic tube I used when I had to feed the Holstein calf an energy supplement.  After some trouble getting the tube down the calf's throat safely we gave it a cup's worth of milk.

I had a space heater to warm the barn but that was a slow going process.  I decided to bring the calf inside my house where it was warmer.  This is Toby's first calf, and while the calf was not quite as big as Buddy's calves were, Toby's calf was plenty heavy.  I was exhausted carrying the calf through the wind and snow to the house.

A beautiful - but sick - calf.

In the house we warmed the calf more.  His nose, tongue and lower legs were cold to the touch.  Donna discovered the calf had one tooth loose.  We wondered if a heifer had stepped on the calf.  Donna toweled and rubbed the calf.  We fed it more cups of milk hourly for several hours until after midnight it seemed as if his stomach was full and he couldn't take any more milk.  I got better at getting the tube down his throat.  We would roll the calf over to its other side every so often. The calf went from quiet and unresponsive to making occasion moaning sounds.  Still he would just lay there.  I recently read that newborn calves only had fat energy reserves for two hours after birth.  After that their energy level starts to decline.

I took Donna home at 1 pm.  The storm was still raging though the wind was no longer gusting to 43 mph.   It was only blowing at 21 mph with gusts to 29 mph.   I didn't realize that Donna's driveway has a ditch on its sides.  I slipped off the road and got stuck in the deep hard packed snow.  I shoveled and shoveled snow.  Still I couldn't get back up onto the driveway and slid further to the side.  The second time I got stuck I couldn't get out of my driver side door as the snow was halfway up the side of the pickup.  Once I got out of the passenger side door I shoveled and shoveled the snow and shoveled more.  I created a long path forward and backward so as to get a run and momentum to get back up onto the driveway.  Donna started her snow blower and began to clear a path on the driveway ahead of the pickup.  After 20 minutes of shoveling snow I got my pickup back up on the driveway.

I got back home after 1:30 am.  The calf was laying and breathing hard with occasional moaning sounds.  I looked at one of his eyes.  It was open but still.

I stayed up.  I checked my email, etc. on the computer then watched a movie.  I would occasionally check the calf and roll it over.  Sometime between 4:30 and 5:30 am the calf died.  The calf was behind the 8-ball since it was born early.  The Winter storm and cold did not help.