D. E. Larsen, DVM

I launched the drift boat at the Rock Creek Campground boat ramp. After parking the pickup and trailer. The kids decide that they need to run back to the camp for one last item. 

“Okay,” I said, “I will pull the boat down by the camp and wait for you there.”

With that, I got in the boat that rowed down the bank, so it was close to our campsite. Now I just waited for the kids to show up.

Time away from the practice was precious to me. It was rare that everything lined up in a manner that would allow us a weekend away. Craine Prairie Reservoir, on Century Drive south of Bend, was one of my favorite places to fish. It held large rainbows and was big enough that you could avoid the crowds. It was also far enough away from Sweet Home that it would be rare for me to be recognized.

When I was away from town, I always avoided any mention of being a veterinarian. Any mention of my profession, even complete strangers, would prompt a long story of their dog, or cat, and their trips to the vet clinic. Being an introvert at heart, I hated such conversations, especially from strangers.

I pretty much only fly fished. There were times when we would fish with bait, with the kids, and when we could harvest the catch. We had learned that the fish out of Craine Prairie tasted like mud this time of the year. You almost couldn’t use enough tartar sauce to make them palatable. 

When we were loaded up, I rowed out to Osprey Point and dropped an anchor from each end of the boat. This would keep it from swaying in the wind. I had made fly poles for the kids. I used inexpensive fiberglass rods, and a half feet in length, and rated for line weight of 4. Since kids cannot cast too far, and the most expensive part of a fly setup is the line, I took double taper floating lines and cut them in two. This gave each rod a 33 foot, tapered, fly line. This was almost perfect for young kids

At Osprey Point, there was a deep hole just off the point and large fish for the taking. It was also an area were the kids could fish with their floating fly lines. By using a nymph, about 6 feet under a strike indicator used as a bobber, they could hook their share of fish. This allowed me to fish the deep hole with a sinking line. I would drag an olive Wooly Worm across the bottom of the hole. This made for wild action most of the time.

I always believed that when you were fishing with kids, the action was urgent. The quickest way to sour a kid on fishing was to make them sit in a boat, or on a bank, for hours with nothing happening. We hooked fish in the first 15 minutes or a half an hour at most, or we would go do something else. When a kid asks when do they know they have a bite, you have waited too long before going to do something else.

We managed to get everyone hooked up with a fish in a short time, but that was enough for most of them. We headed back to camp to drop off the kids. Derek was the only one who wanted to fish more. We needed a lunch break anyway.

When I was ready to go back out in the afternoon, Derek was dragging around a little. 

“I will wait for you at the boat,” I said as I headed down to the shoreline.

I was standing there leaning against the side of the boat when I noticed the group of boys. There were 4 boys, walking along the shoreline, coming from the direction of the boat ramp. They looked like they were somewhere around 10 years old. They were checking out everything that looked movable as they came along the bank. One of the boys was carrying something.

When they reached me, they stopped, and the one boy handed me a bird he had been carrying. It was a Starling. It had a blowgun dart that pierced through its back just in front of the wings. The wound was days old, maybe a full week. There was extensive tissue necrosis around the dart that extended across its back. Its wings were not functional. Even with comprehensive medical treatment at this point, this bird would never fly again. My impression was this bird would not survive, even with medical treatment.

The larger question was how had this group of young boys find the only veterinarian standing on the banks of Craine Prairie today. Even when I thought I had made a clean escape from town, even when I was as anonymous as it was possible to be, they still find me.

I knell down, so I am talking at the same level as the boys. This was no rag-tag group. These boys were well dressed for a fishing lake shoreline. I would guess they were all from well to do families. They were probably reasonably well educated. If that can be said for a group of 10-year-old boys when they were grouped with their peers.

I point out the extent of the wounds caused by this dart.

“I hope the guy who shot this dart is proud of his skill.,” I said, hoping to still some pity for the bird and to just maybe educate the boys on the ethics of killing an animal. “This bird has been suffering for several days, maybe a full week. You can tell by looking at the rotten flesh around the dart.”

They carefully examine the wound, probably for the first time. I wiggle the dart a bit, to illustrate that the tissue infection has allowed the dart to loosen in the tissue.

“Hunting, and fishing, is something that we do as a people,” I said. “Some people would say this bird should not have been shot, but it is one of the birds that people are allowed to shoot. But to shot the bird and not finish the kill is cruel to the bird.”

The boys have some chatter over those statements. Each one of them sort of repeat their interpretation of what I have just told them.

“I don’t think this bird is going to survive,” I said. “For us to finish the kill would probably be the best thing we could do today. This bird has suffered enough, and we should bring that suffering to an end.”

So now I was in a corner. With 4 boys watching, how was I going to euthanize this bird?

One of the boys who, I noticed now, was wearing a cub scout shirt, took the lead. 

“Set him on the ground, and I will get a rock,” the young scout said. “I can crush him with a rock.”

“That might work,” I said. “But you might miss, that wouldn’t be very fair to the poor bird.”

“How should we do it?” the young scout asked.

“I will take care of him,” I said, hoping the boys would continue their exploration of the shoreline.

No such luck, they all stood there, looking at me for the answer. I gripped the bird in my right hand and held it so the body would not respond. Then I took a firm grip on the head with my left hand. With a quick jerk, I pulled the head off the bird. The body quivered in my right hand for a few seconds.

 “Oh! He pulled the head off!” the young scout said.

“That was the quickest way to do it here,” I said. “Now, he is not suffering anymore. You guys remember, if you shoot something, you make sure it is dead.”

Then it is over, the boys continue along the shoreline, I toss the decapitated bird into the grass. Derek comes down from the camp about then, realizing he had missed something, but not knowing what to ask.

We loaded up and went out to fish for a few precious hours. Surely, they won’t find me out on the lake.

Photo Credit: Serena Koi on Pexels.com

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Doc, this is Harold. You have to come quick. There is blood everywhere. I think she is bleeding to death!”

Then the phone went dead. I looked at the clock, 4:50. At least it is not 3:00 AM. That means something happened during the morning milking. What could have happened that would cause a cow to bleed so much in a milking parlor?

I jumped out of bed and dressed quickly. I have been going to Harold’s place too often, it seemed. This time I have to hurry into a mess that I can’t even begin to imagine. Hard to say what I was going to be walking into.

It was a short drive to Harold’s place. The driveway up to the barn was a little steep but well maintained. I pulled the truck as close to the milking parlor as I could. I jumped out of the truck and hurried to the door.

Harold was waiting for me and held the door open. He was covered with blood.

“Are you alright?” I asked with genuine concern.

“I am fine, but you need to look at this cow, quick.”

We went into the parlor, there was blood on the floor, running down the floor drain. The cow is a big animal, and losing a gallon of blood is probably no big deal. But I don’t think I was prepared for this much blood on the floor.

I got to the cow, still standing in the milking stall. Blood was still streaming from where a teat should have been.

“What the hell happened?” I asked.

“She had mastitis. I have watched you guys whack off a dozen teats before, so I just took my knife and whacked it off,” Harold explained with a motion of this hand to show how he had whacked the teat off.

“Harold, when we have cut a teat off, it is because the mastitis is so severe that the tissue is dead,” I said. “This teat is very much alive. I will explain more after I get this bleeding under control.”

I ran back to the truck and grabbed a bucket of water and scrub, scissors, a needle holder, and a pack of suture material.

After a rapid swab of the area, I started placing some mattress sutures around the bleed base of the teat, or where the teat should be. As I got all the way around the opening, the blood flow finally stopped. Harold was correct about one thing, this cow could have bled to death. In these large dairy cows, the udder receives a tremendous blood supply. This is evident when you look at the large veins running forward from the udder on the ventral abdomen. These veins are garden hose size.

With the bleeding stopped, I cleaned the wound as best I could. This quarter was obviously lost. I just hoped that we could keep the infection under control, so the cow was not lost. 

When the cow loses a quarter, the other quarters will show a compensatory increase in production. In this way, she does not lose 25% of her production, but more like 10 to 15%. So most of the time, the cow can remain a productive member of the herd. With the antibiotics that will be needed to prevent a significant infection, this cow’s milk will be suitable only for feeding to the calves, and the barn cats. She may lose a month of production, at least two weeks.

Finally, I relaxed enough to talk with Harold. He had been frantically trying to keep the milking string moving while I had been working on this cow.

“It is important for you to understand what went on here tonight,” I said. “When you cut that teat off, you threw away a quarter that could have been treated for mastitis and returned to full production. When we cut a teat off, it is because the infection is so severe that the whole quarter has gangrene, and the tissue is dead. That is why there is no blood when we cut a teat off. So, next time, if the teat isn’t black, don’t cut it off.”

“Doc, there ain’t going to be no next time,” Harold said. “I am just going to call you first. I just thought I could save a few dollars and look what happened.”

“This is going to take a little time for this wound to heal,” I said. “I am not sure just how we will handle it. I want to talk with Don and Jack in the morning, and we will come up with a plan. We are not going to be able to completely close the wound because there is going to be some milk drainage for a time. I think we might be able to close most of the wound and just place a rubber drain, but I want to discuss that plan before we do it.”

“Just tell what I need to do with her,” Harold said.

“For now, you need to keep her in a clean stall by herself,” I said. “I will be back later this morning, maybe with Don, and we will work on this wound again. You will need to discard her milk until we completed her antibiotic treatment.”

“Can I use it for the calves?” Harold asked.

“That will be fine, but you should milk her last, so there is no chance of getting any antibiotics into your holding tank,” I said. “Otherwise, you might end up buying a tanker truck full of milk.”

With that, I cleaned up and headed home. I figured I would just have time for a good breakfast before I had to be at the office.

“What did he do?” Don asked, somewhat, not believing my story. 

“Yes, He just took his knife and cut the damn teat off,” I repeated. “I thought I was walking into a murder scene when I entered the milking parlor. So now there is a big hole into the milk cistern. I placed a bunch of mattress sutures to get the bleeding stopped but I wanted to talk to you about how I should close the hole.”

“I agree about placing a drain for a few days and suturing most of the hole closed,” Don said. “Maybe this would be a place to try that closure that was in the Veterinary Medicine journal last month. That would probably hold better than sutures.”

“I have some time this morning, let’s run out there together,” Don said, “I want to see this.”

Harold was waiting with the cow in the parlor when we pulled into the barnyard.

Harold had cleaned up the blood from the morning fiasco, but there was still some blood on his apron hanging by the door.

“We are going to close up this wound, and hopefully it will heal without too much of a problem,” Don said as he looked closely at the gaping hole on the bottom of the udder. There was some dried blood around the wound and a slow drainage of milk from the hole.

We scrubbed the wound and sprayed Betadine around and into the wound. I injected a good dose of lidocaine around the wound. Then I placed a small Penrose drain in the front edge of the wound and secured it with a couple of sutures.

Neither Don nor I had done this new closure that was written up for teat lacerations, but it was simple enough. Teat lacerations were challenging to deal with, especially if they extended into the milk channel. This closure was fast and simple and provided a wide spread of the tension, so there was little chance of tearing the tissue.

After apposing the wound edges with a couple of towel clamps, I took three 18 gauge, 1½ inch needles, and placed them across the wound, evenly spaced, and entering and exiting about 1/2 inch from the wound edge on each side. Then using umbilical tape, I closed the wound by lacing around the needles, much like you would close the body cavity of a turkey before putting it in the oven.

This proved so simple and provided a tight closure with the tension distributed across the entire length of the wound. It would be unlikely to tear out. Both Don and I wondered why it had never been published before. I cut the sharp end of the needles off with a wire cutter and sprayed the area with some Furacin wound spray.

“I will be back in 3 days to check this wound,” I told Harold. “You need to give her an injection of 10 ccs of Polyflex each day. Otherwise, don’t do anything to the wound. If you notice these needles fall out, give us a call. And don’t cut off any more teats.”

Photo by Matthias Zomer from Pexels

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