Cookie’s Litter, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Dr. Larsen, This is Maude, from Brownsville,” Maude said into the phone. “Cookie, my best milk goat, is about ready to deliver. She is so large that she has been down for two days. Can I bring her up to your place so you can look at her?”

“That’s fine, Maude, you just need to know that we are not in the clinic yet,” I said. “We are still practicing out of our house on Ames Creek.”

“I think I can find it,” Maude said. “It doesn’t bother me, and Cookie is used to an old barn, so a garage won’t be a problem for her.”

When Maude arrived, and we got Cookie unloaded, her appearance was amazing. She had been down for two days because her abdomen was so massive, she could not support it standing. I was worried that she might even have a Hydrops Allantois, but I could easily palpate a couple of very active kids in the uterus. 

The only time I had seen Hydrops was while I was in school at Colorado State University, in a cow bred to a Bison bull. In that cow, you could not palpate any fetus. And on C-Section, the calf was dead. Hydrops is common in cows bred to Bison bulls. The Beefalo’s calves come from Bison cows bred to a Bovine bull. 

“We have some decisions to make, Maude,” I said. “If we wait for her to deliver, there is a good possibility that she will suffer significant musculoskeletal injury from being down for such a long time. If we do a C-section, we take a chance on the kids being early. That will mean that all of them may not survive.”

“You say, all of them,” Maude said. “How many do you think are in there?”

“I think a bunch,” I said. “I have seen 4 lambs in a ewe, and she was almost this big. There is about a 1 in 10,000 chance, and it might even be higher in the goat. There are at least 3 kids in there, I think there may be 4.”

“I think I am more worried about Cookie than I am about the kids,” Maude said. “It would be nice to get a bunch of kids out of her, but I want you to know that Cookie is the priority in this event.”

“So, I hear you say that you want to do a C-Section,” I said.

“Yes, that is what I want to do,” Maude said. “When can you do it?”

“Maude, I am just getting started here,” I said. “My days are not full, I can do it right now.”

“Good, can I stay and watch?” Maude asked.

“You are more than welcome to watch,” I said. “In fact, you might be put to work if we have 4 kids in there. I see you have a couple of bales of straw in the back of your pickup. Is there a chance we could use one of those to bed her down. She would be more comfortable than on the bare concrete.”

“That is what I brought them for,” Maude said. “Let me pull them out of the truck.”

We used one of the straw bales to bed Cookie down in the back of the garage while we set up for surgery. Sandy sets some chairs out for Maude and her driver.

“Once we get set up, things will go pretty fast,” I explained to Maude. “I will roll her up on her back, and we will clip and prep an area in front of her udder. I will make an incision, then we will start pulling kids out as fast as I can. If there are 4 of them, everybody will have a kid to take care as I close up things for Cookie.”

“I have never seen anything like this before,” Maude said. “I guess I will be okay. At least if there are kids to care for, I will have something to do.”

Paula had everything ready, so we rolled Cooked up on her back. Again, I was amazed at the size of her belly. It spread out in both directions. 

“I don’t think she could roll off her back if she tried,” I said to Paula. “You better tell Sandy to get every spare towel she can find. We are going to spell all sorts of fluid out of this uterus.”

With the abdomen clipped and prepped, I made the incision on the ventral midline in front of the udder. My kids watched from the kitchen doorway, and Maude sort of stretched her neck to see better.

“I thought there would be more blood,” Maude said.

“As long as I can avoid these large milk veins coming from the udder, there should be very little blood,” I said.

I extended the incision through the linea alba, pulled the omentum forward, so it was out of the way. Then I reached in to grab the head of the first kid I encountered. I drew this head through the abdomen incision and incised the uterus carefully. 

The kid’s head popped out of the incision and shook. I think she was ready to be out of there. Grabbing her neck, I pulled her the rest of the way through the incision. There was a rush of fluid that came with her. I handed her back to Maude. Maude was waiting with a towel.

“This kid is the same size as a single,” Maude said.

“No wonder she is as big as a house,” I said as I reached in and grabbed the second kid by the head also.

This kid came out fighting also. And like her sister, she was the size of a single.

“Two girls so far,” I said. “In a couple of years, you’re going to have so much milk you won’t know what to do with it.”

I reached in and grabbed a couple of hind legs in the far uterine horn. I tugged, and they did not move a lot. I felt close, I had one leg from two different kids. Correcting my error, I pulled the third girl out by her hind legs.

“Maude, there is another one in there,” I said. “And this one is another girl.”

Sandy stepped up, with the help of our girls, to take this kid. Maude had the first kid standing already. Everybody was busy now, and there were smiles all around. Nothing like baby goats to make people happy.

I reached in and pulled out the last kid, another girl. 

“This probably sets some sort of a record. Quadruplets, and all females,” I said as I handed the last kid to Paula.

I started pulling as much of the fetal membranes out through the incision as I could. There is no way to take them all out with damaging the uterus. But I would pull out a bunch and cut them off with scissors. We had all the towels and straw soaked with uterine fluids. 

“This is probably going to take as long to clean up this mess as it took for the surgery,” I said, more to myself than to anybody else.

I closed the single incision in the uterus. It was about a six-inch incision, sort of amazing that you could drag 4 kids through that incision. After returning the uterus to a normal position, I closed the Linea Alba with a sliding mattress suture using #2 Dexon. The external incision was closed in a conventional two-layer manner.

“Cookie, you are going have a flabby belly for a time,” I said as we rolled her off her back and made her comfortable on a clean spot in the straw. She wanted the kids, so Maude started handing them over to her one at a time. It didn’t seem to bother her at all to have all 4 of them to care for. 

“What do you think we should do with her now, Doc,” Maude asked.

“I think we should milk her out and get some colostrum into the kids,” I said. “It is early enough that leaving the kids with her for the day will probably be the best. I will give her some IV Glucose and Calcium just to give her a little more energy. I am guessing that she isn’t going to be up until morning. I would like like to keep her until then. I don’t know if I can handle the 4 kids running around the house.”

“I will go home for the day,” Maude said. “I have a lot of chores waiting. I will get back here around 5:00 this afternoon if that is okay. I will take the kids home. That is not a big thing. I have plenty of colostrum in the freezer, and I don’t leave the kids with my milkers anyway.”

“That will work fine,” I said. “Then, we will just see what morning gives us with Cookie.”

Cookie was up and looking for both food and a milker when I checked her early the next morning. Luckily, Maude pulled into the driveway about when I was heading into the house to give her a call.

“I guessed that Cookie would be up and ready to be milked,” Maude said. “I figured you would appreciate getting her out of here early.

“I think she will be ready for the milking stand by the time you get home with her,” I said. “She should be good to go. I see she passed her membranes last night. Just keep an eye on her, and I will drop by to just glance at that incision in a couple of days. I generally leave those sutures in place for about 3 weeks, just to be safe.”

Cookie healed with no problems, and the kids became a great addition to Maude’s milking string.

Photo by Brenda Timmermans from Pexels.

Jerd 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Peggy was lying on the kitchen floor and reaching as far as possible under the wood cookstove. 

“I can almost reach him,” Peggy said.

“Leave him alone. He will just scratch you,” I said. “Jerd doesn’t like us.”

Jerd was our grandmother’s cat. He was a short-haired, white cat with one blue eye and one yellow eye. He was a loner and spent much of his time hunting and sometimes fighting the other barn cats. And he was death on grandkids. He was fine when we were watching him from across the room. But try to touch him, and he was all claws.

The only time he would tolerate our presence was when we were helping him find mice in the haymow of the lower barn. We could scatter hay, and the mice would run in all directions. He seemed to be able to catch one with each paw and one in his mouth.

Peggy reached a little further, and there was a low growl and then a hiss. Peggy withdrew her arm with a long set of scratch marks on the top of her hand. She was crying by the time Grandma got to the kitchen.

“I have told you, kids, time and again, to leave that old cat alone,” Grandma said. That was probably the first time I had heard her speak in a stern voice. “Now, let’s get in the bathroom, wash this up, and put some Merthiolate on it.”

“That stings,” Peggy said through tears from the scratch and now the fear of the treatment.

“It helps if you blow on it after putting it on,” Grandma said.

***  

A year or two later, during silo filling time, we little kids were stuck in the house with Grandma and the other women preparing lunch for the crew. It was more like a Thanksgiving dinner. 

Uncle Rodney pulled up to the back gate in his tractor with a sickle mower attached. He came through the gate and up the steps to the back porch. Grandma and a couple of the other ladies were waiting for him on the back porch.

“Mom, I just wanted to tell you that Jerd was out in the grass hunting mice, and the mower got him,” Uncle Rodney said. “It cut off all his legs, so we knocked him in the head to put him out of his misery. I think he must have been deaf. Otherwise, he would have heard the tractor coming.”

“That was the only thing you could do,” Grandma said. “What have you done with him?” 

“Duke is burying him over under that big myrtle tree on the creek bank,” Uncle Rodney said.

“That’s a good place for him,” Grandma said. “I’ll miss the old guy, but the grandkids will probably be safer with him gone.”

***

 Many years later, my mind drifted back to that day on Grandma’s back porch. I was waiting at the clinic for a client to bring in a cat that had been injured by a sickle mower in the fading light of the summer evening.

As I thought about Jerd and his behavior, he probably was deaf. That was why he was so antisocial with people and why he never hung around the barn with the other cats. White cats do have a genetic degeneration of the organ of Corti in the middle ear. So it is very possible that he was deaf.

And the sickle mower took all of his legs. I am wondering just what this lady will be expecting for the treatment of her cat tonight. And how many legs will it be missing?

“Good evening, Doctor Larsen,” Sally said as she came through the door with her cat peeking out of a bundle of towels. “Thank you so much for coming in this evening to look at my Oliver.”

I took Sally and Oliver into an exam room and placed the bundle of towels on the table.

“Tell me again, what happened to Oliver,” I said.

“Jim was trying to get the last of the field mowed this evening,” Sally said. “Oliver must have been out there, hunting in the tall grass. Anyway, Oliver got caught in the sickle blades, and he is a real mess. When Jim called out to me to bring a towel, I was afraid he had been hurt. I saw Oliver trying to walk as soon as I got to the tractor. I just scooped him up and headed back to the house. That’s when I called you.”

I carefully peeled the towels away so I could get a good look at Oliver. Oliver seemed resigned to his fate but didn’t display any obvious discomfort. What a mess, both of Oliver’s hind feet were severed just below the hock joints. His right front leg was severed at the middle of his forearm. There was only a minor laceration on his left front leg.

“Sally, there is not much I can do for Oliver,” I said. “Maybe we should be thinking of what would be in his best interest.”

“Can’t you just sew up his wounds?” Sally asked.

“Yes, I can sew up these wounds, but I am not sure how well Oliver will be able to motivate,” I said. “Are you sure you want to deal with him in that situation?”

“I just can’t give up on him over an accident that was not his fault,” Sally said.

“I am pretty certain that his stumps won’t hold up to any outside activity, and I am not sure how well he will handle the litter box in the house,” I said. “I don’t have a problem with repairing his wounds, as long as he will be in a situation that is livable for him. We could always rethink our decision later if you have difficulty dealing with Oliver at home.”

“Can you do this tonight?” Sally asked.

“Yes, after I get him under anesthesia, I will clean up these wounds and close things up,” I said. “I might have to shorten his stumps a bit just to be able to make more functional stumps.

“Will I be able to pick him up in the morning?” Sally asked.

“Probably, but call first,” I said. “I will need to check him over and make sure his pain is under control before sending him home.”

I gave Oliver a hefty dose of ketamine to start anesthesia and provide some pain control. 

In the surgery room, I prepped the wounds and trimmed the stumps on both hind legs, removing all the remnants of the metatarsal bones. This allowed me the ability to form a smooth, well-padded stump on each hind leg that could maybe serve Oliver pretty well. 

I smoothed the bones on the right front leg and closed that stump. It would not be as functional as his hind leg stumps, but it would heal well.

I infused a little lidocaine into each repair to help with pain on recovery, but with the ketamine onboard, he should be okay until morning. I settled him into a well-padded kennel.

“We will see you in the morning, Oliver,” I said as I closed the kennel door. “We will see what morning gives us.”

***

In the morning, Oliver was up and looking for breakfast. He seemed to be doing well in the kennel. Hopefully, he will do okay at home.

Sally was in the early afternoon, and Oliver was happy to see her. We sent him home with instructions to stay indoors and keep incisions clean and dry, and use a pelleted litter

I saw Oliver once more for suture removal, and Sally reported he was doing well at home. The incisions had healed well, and the stumps looked like they would be serviceable. He didn’t use his right front leg stump but moved around on his hind leg stumps and his good left front leg.

After that last visit, I never saw Sally or Oliver again. One can only hope that Oliver’s life was tolerable for him.

Photo be Sergio Souza on Pexels.

The Young Boy and the Creek 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

When spring finally came in my third grade year  and I was deemed old enough to fish in the creek by myself. I was nine years old that March. I am not sure why it took Mom so long to come to the conclusion that I was old enough.  I knew every inch of the creek from our upper line fence, through our hill country and across to Herman’s field all the way to the bridge at the highway, maybe a distance of a mile or so.

My only problem now was school. The weekend only provided limited time at the creek. Dad had to drive the car to work. I figured that if I was sick until the bus was gone, Mom would have to let me go to the creek. Friday morning came, and Mom came upstairs to wake us boys up. The 3 of us shared an upstairs bedroom. My sister had the other room to herself.

 “I’m sick to my stomach.,” I told Mom.

“Okay, you can stay in bed,” Mom said.

I laid there and listened for the bus. When I was sure it had pulled out and headed down the road I sprang from the bed. I was confident that the monster was not under the bed this morning because I had watched my brothers get up and get dressed. I made my usual trip down the stairs, bounding down several steps at a time, with a final jump from four steps up, trying desperately to touch the ceiling that crossed the lower staircase.

Mom was in the kitchen. I stood close to the wood stove, the only source of heat in the house.  “I am feeling better,” I said.

“Oh, no you don’t, you go back to bed. You have to stay in bed at least until noon,” Mom said.

I had not counted on that, but that would be okay. Without a breakfast, I could get hungry early then go fishing in the afternoon, I thought as I headed back up the stairs.

Mom finally called me to come down for lunch. She had been working in the garden all morning. We had a large garden, about 1/2 acre.  I was already dressed in my work clothes. We sat at the dinning room table by the window. Mom always liked to sit where she could watch her lilac bush, flowers in the yard and the distant traffic on the highway. There were seldom more than 1 or 2 cars during lunch. Today we had an egg salad sandwich and a small dish of canned pears. Not my favorite, Mrs. Lilly would be serving her chili at the school today. 

This year was the first year that we had a school cafeteria. It was added on the back of the gym. All the mothers had worked with Mrs. Lilly during the summer and fall, canning stuff from the garden and all sorts of fruit.  But my favorite by far was Mrs. Lilly’s chili.  Only the chance of catching fish by myself would lure me away from that lunch.

I helped clean up the table after lunch. Summoned all my courage and then I spoke, “I’m feeling a lot better now, and I am sure bored.”

“You should have gone to school,” Mom said.

“Maybe I should go fishing,” I replied.

“Okay, you can go fishing. But you don’t go too far down the creek. If you can see the highway you have gone too far. And don’t you get yourself wet, you stay on the bank, and stay off the log jam.”

I was out the door in a shot. I grabbed the willow pole that I had cut and rigged last weekend from the cabinet on the back porch. I also picked up my little canister of tackle. I opened it to see what was left, 1 split shot, 1 hook and small, mostly empty, spool of leader.  I would have to be careful in the logjam hole. Maybe I would avoid that hole today, I thought. 

The pole was a cut willow branch about 5 feet long. I had cut a notch in the end and tied a length of line maybe 8 feet long.  I tied a loop in the end of that line and attached the hook with its short leader there. One splint shot above the knot and the rigging was complete. This was precious tackle. This was all there was. 

My brother and I would take the wagon on Saturday mornings and walk to Broadbent, about 2 miles down the road. We picked up bottles along the way. When we turned in the bottles at the store we got 1 cent for beer bottles, 2 cents for pop bottles and 5 cents for large quart size bottles. Mostly there were beer bottles.

With the money we bought our fishing tackle. Once in awhile on a good day there would be money left over for a candy bar or something. We could usually make the tackle last until the next trip but the logjam hole could eat a lot of tackle. That hole had the biggest fish. To fish it best you had to climb out on the logjam and fish down the cracks. Mom didn’t like to see us do that, but the biggest fish were there.  Today I would fish at the falls and be satisfied.  I picked up an empty tuna can from the trash and headed for the manure pile beside the barn.

We always just left the shovel stuck in the ground by the edge of the manure pile. If you could turn over a scoop of dirt by the edge there were generally enough worms for the afternoon.  It was hard for me to turn that scoop. Sometimes when I was by myself I had to dig in the manure pile.  The worms were small there. I jumped on the shovel to drive it into the ground and leaned back on the handle hard.  It flipped up on large scoop of dirt, and it was loaded with worms.  I filled the can quickly.

I headed across the field to the falls.  They were on Herman’s land but that was okay.  I could hear the roar of the water as it spilled over the low falls, maybe 5 or 6 feet high.  The hole here was deep and I could usually catch as many fish as I wanted here.  Once in awhile I would catch one that was 10 or even 12 inches but not as often as at the logjam.  With my pocketknife I cut a willow fork to hold the fish as I climbed down the bank. I had carried a pocketknife since I was 5 years old. All the boys at school had a pocketknife, we often played mumbley-peg at school during recess and lunch.

When I got to the hole I sat on the rock ledge beside the falls and threaded a worm on the hook, pinching off the excess worm. If the fishing was good I would need all the worms I had. I stood up and drop the line into the water just outside of the bubbles made by the falls. As usual, there was no wait, I had my first fish almost as soon as the worm hit the water.  I quickly unhooked it and broke its neck with my finger in its mouth and bending its head back. Then I placed in on the willow fork. I touched up the worm on the hook and added a little more worm. 

Returning the line to water, there was another fish, again, almost instantly. In a half hour time I had a dozen fish on the willow fork, all of them about 8 inches long. I was sure I could easily catch a dozen more, but I wanted to catch some bigger fish.  The logjam was about 3 holes down the creek. It was the last hole before the road was in view. I thought I would skip the 3 holes and go right to the log jam. Mom would never know.

It was good weather and the sun was out; the logs were dry. I liked to fish from the two large logs near the downstream edge of the logjam. They were the easiest to stand on and had a good gap between them. It always seemed that the bigger fish were under those logs. I lowered my worm into the gap between the logs. Again, almost instantly, there was a hookup. This was a bigger fish than the others, I would guess 11 inches. It took a little longer to tend to fish at this hole because I had to go to the bank each time. In the next half hour I had a total of 4 more fish, all between 10 and 12 inches. 

I lowered the wormed hook into the water between the logs. This time there was a funny tug on the line. I raised it again, slowly. A large trout followed it toward the surface before sinking back into the depth of the water. This was a large trout, maybe the largest I had seen in this creek. My heart raced and I lowered the line back into the depths of the water. Bam! There was a big strike on the line. I pulled and the fish pulled. The willow pole bent almost double. He slowly came to surface and the water between my feet exploded. He made a strong dive. Again I pulled and he struggled. Then my pull was against dead weight. He must of wrapped the line around a snag.  I was sick, not only was I about to lose this fish but I was going to lose the tackle also.

When I looked over the downstream edge of the log I could see the large trout still on the hook, struggling against the snag. If I could get down there, maybe I could catch him by hand and maybe even retrieve my tackle. I laid down the willow pole and went back to the bank, moving down the creek to a point I could get into the water. The water below the hole was not deep. The water was very cold. As I approached the hole I could see the trout. He was hung up on a small branch on a short piece of line. When I got close enough to reach him I was in waist deep water. I reached in and grabbed the fish, when I got a finger through his gills I was able to unhook him.

What a prize. It was probably 15, maybe even 16, inches long. I got him to bank. He was too big for me to break his neck. I took my pocketknife and severed his spine at the base of his skull.  After adding him to the willow fork, I returned to creek to try to retrieve my tackle. I found the stick the line had been wrapped around but it was not the now. There was another hook imbedded in the same stick however. When I retrieved this hook it still had some line attached and a split shot.  I was able to reach the willow pole on the log. I pulled my line up with no problem. 

This had been a great afternoon. Not only had I caught the biggest fish in the creek but I was coming home with more tackle than when I left the house. I gathered everything up and headed for the house. Even with the sun out, I was already chilled. Mom was going to be upset, but she would feel better when she saw this fish. I remember how excited she was when my oldest brother caught a 20 inch fish in the river last fall.

Mom was waiting on the porch as I crawled through the fence into the yard. She had her hand on her hips and a frown on her face. Mom never got really mad. She just said she was got disappointed.

“I thought I told you not to get wet!” she said.

“Mom, I couldn’t help it, this big fish almost got away,” I replied, holding up the willow fork filled with fish.

She took the mess of fish and started for the kitchen.  “You get out of those wet clothes and get in by the fire before you catch pneumonia,” she said.

I stripped down on the porch and put my clothes in the hamper by the wringer washer. Now I was really cold. I scampered into the kitchen and huddled up to the wood stove.

“You bring your shoes in behind the stove, I will get you a blanket,” she said.

I ran out, grabbed my shoes and returned to the stove. As I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, I could start to feel the warmth return to my body. It had been a great afternoon.

Monday morning, as I was hurrying out the door to catch the school bus, Mom handed me a neatly folded note.

“Here is your excuse for Friday, you give it to your teacher when first get to school,” she said.

On the bus I took the note out of my pocket and carefully unfolded it. It read: “Please excuse David from school last Friday. He was ill.”

Photo by David Mark on Pixabay.