Sudden Death in a Calf 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

The ground was frozen solid, and I stumbled as I traveled over the uneven mud headed to the small barn. I was carrying my medical bag and a bucket of warm water, and I hoped I wouldn’t slush most of the water before making it to the barn.

Jan was leading the way with a flashlight that cast a dim beam. I hoped the batteries would last till we got to the barn and I could get my lantern out of my bag.

Inside the barn, it was just as cold as the outside, and there were no lights. The little calf was laid out in a thick bed of straw. I dropped to my knees and opened my bag. Turning on the lantern helped light up this corner of the barn.

The calf’s muzzle was cold, and I stuck a finger in his mouth, and he had only a weak suck reflex.

“You said this calf was normal this morning?” I asked.

“Yes, he was bouncing around like all the other calves,” Jan said. “I was surprised when I came out this evening and found him stretched out like he was dead. I’m sorry I called so late, but we were gone this afternoon, and I didn’t get out to check on things until after dark. I could have missed him altogether if I hadn’t almost tripped over him.”

“You should convince Frank that you should put lights out here,” I said. “Even a battery-operated lantern like this one would help.”

“What do you think about the calf?” Jan asked.

“He has some diarrhea, but for that to cause this kind of collapse in twelve hours would be unusual,” I said. “He would have been dead in the morning if you hadn’t found him, and I’m not sure we can save him. This weather is pretty rough. Do you have any place you could put him where it would be warmer?”

“The garage is just as cold as the barn,” Jan said. “I don’t think enough of him to bring him into the house. He is going to have to make it here. This bed of straw is the best I can do. I guess we could see if we have an extension cord long enough so we could hang a heat lamp for him.”

“I am going give him some oral fluids that will put a warm spot in his belly,” I said. “And I will give him a big dose of IV antibiotics. If he is dead in the morning, we should send some samples to the lab. If you have a hot bug on the place, we need to know about it. We don’t want any others to show up like this one.”

***

“Jan is on the phone,” Sandy said. “That calf you treated last night is dead this morning.”

“You need to free some time up for me to run out this morning to do a necropsy on that calf,” I said.

“She was hoping she could bring it into the clinic,” Sandy said. “Just to avoid paying for another farm call.”

“Tell her I will run out there for no farm call charge,” I said. “If there is a hot E. coli in that calf, we don’t need to contaminate the clinic.”

I checked to ensure I had everything I might need in the truck. I thought I would need several samples from the calf, to include fresh samples for culture and samples in formalin. When everything was loaded, I headed out to meet with Jan.

“I don’t know when he died,” Jan said. “He was cold and stiff this morning.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said. “I think he was pretty close to being gone when we treated him last night.”

“I know you are worried that there was something important that caused his sudden death,” Jan said. “But we are a little concerned about the expense of a lot of lab work.”

“I can understand that,” I said. “And it is a valid concern if we send samples to the lab with a blank check. But we can hold them to some specific tests. But let me get a look first, and there might be an easy explanation.”

I opened his abdomen from his chest to his pelvis with the calf on his back. 

“What the heck is this?” I said, more to myself than to Jan. “His small intestine is ruptured.”

There was intestinal content all through his abdomen. There would have been no saving this fellow. I searched through the intestines until I found the transected loop of the bowel.

“What could have caused that to happen?” Jan asked as she watched over my shoulder.

“That’s a good question,” I said as I continued to explore the abdomen. “It looks like it was strangulated. I guess I better check his belly button.”

When I looked at his umbilicus, there was a large hernia present, and there was no content in the hernia. 

“It looks like he had a large umbilical hernia,” I said. “Apparently, a loop of bowel got in there and strangulated. The bowel must have returned to the abdomen when it ruptured, so it wasn’t obvious when I treated him last night. Not that it would have made any difference, there was no saving him, probably not even with a heroic surgery.”

“So, are you still going to need to send stuff to the lab?” Jan asked.

“No, this was just one of those things, sort of the luck of the draw,” I said. “The interesting thing is we usually don’t worry about umbilical hernias in the calf. But, obviously, they can be a problem if they are large enough.”  

“Are these hernias genetic?” Jan asked.

“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “I think they are considered genetic, but probably they don’t have a simple inheritance factor. I never see enough of them to worry much about them. When I was in Enumclaw, another veterinarian in the practice bought a bunch of heifer calves to raise. We repaired several hernias in that bunch. After we did that, those calves seemed to do a lot better. We wondered after that event if we should be putting more emphasis on repairing umbilical hernias in calves. This guy would support that opinion also.”

Photo by Diego F. Parra from Pexels

Old Mister Nielson, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Old Mr. Nielsen sat on a stump by the head of the squeeze chute, watching me closely as I cut a length of OB wire and attached handles to each end. He was s short, stout Norwegian. He covered his thinning gray hair with a tattered old ball cap that sat a little crooked on his head. His weathered face and hands told of uncounted hours of labor in the outdoors. Mr. Nielsen had milked cows for years but now used his farm to raise replacement heifers.

“How do you spell your name, Doc?” He asked. Of all his questions, this was the most important one for him.

“I spell it with an ‘en,’ Larsen,” I replied. “My Grandfather was a Norwegian sea captain who sailed lumber ships on the West Coast.”

That satisfied his curiosity. I was new to Enumclaw, and I was surprised at how ethnic the community was around here. Dr. Larsen could mean Norway, Denmark, or Sweden. Now I would be in solid with the Norwegians.

“What are you going to do with that wire, Doc?” was his next question.

The old veterinarian in the practice, Jack, dehorned these older heifers with the old fashioned guillotine type dehorners. These were almost a medieval instrument, and I had no intention of using them. Four foot long wooden handles attached to a cutting head that was positioned over the base of the horn. When the handles were closed, the guillotine blade half cut and half crushed the horn off. Local anesthesia didn’t help much. Blood would fly, and the heifer would bellower. It did a terrible job, and partial regrowth of the horn was common due to the incomplete removal of the base of the horn.

“This is what I use to remove the horns. It is a wire saw. I think you will be impressed,” I replied.

I think he was less than convinced as we loaded the first heifer into the chute. We had a dozen heifers to dehorn today. They were all yearlings, I hoped I would hold up to this number, but I was young and robust and calculated that I could get the job done. With the head secured with nose tongs, I injected each horn base with Lidocaine for local anesthesia. I seated the OB wire at the base of the horn. Then I started with long, rapid strokes. Smoke rose from the horn as the wire engaged the bone. It smelled like the old, slow dental drills. The process was brief, there was no apparent pain, and no blood as the hot wire seared the vessels. I grasped the exposed arteries with a forceps and pulled them slowly until they broke deep in the tissues and snapped back. This would allow a secure clot to form, and there would be almost no bleeding.

I repeated the process on the second horn. Then I applied some antibiotic powder on the wounds and into the open frontal sinus. The open frontal sinus made an impressive wound that alarmed the neophytes, but Mr. Nielsen had seen it many times before. After applying a good spray for flies, I released the nose tongs. Then I went back and sprayed the switch of her tail. Out of the chute, she ran, no pain, only a drop of blood and standing out in front of the chute like nothing had happened.

     “That is a pretty neat wire you have there. I think I like it, and that heifer acts like nothing happened,” Mr. Nielsen added. Obviously pleased with the job.

“Why did you spray her tail?” Mr. Nielsen asked. 

“Just to make it a little more effective against the flies,” I said.

The other heifers that followed were completed with an identical procedure. I changed the wire saw after every heifer to ensure the speed of the cut was not slowed by a dull wire. The last couple of heifers bled a little more as my strokes became a little slower, and the OB wire failed to sear the arteries. Even then, the bleeding was quickly controlled when the arteries were pulled. 

“This is so much better of a job than what that big old lopper does,” Mr. Nielsen said. 

After cleaning things up, I headed back to the clinic.

When Don, the other veterinarian in the practice, came in that afternoon, he had already heard the story of my dehorning job.

“I think you are going to be doing our dehorning from now on. Old Mr. Nielsen has told almost everyone about the job you did this morning,” Don said. “And your Grandfather’s story didn’t fall on deaf ears either. I think all the Norwegians will be lined up at the front door pretty soon.”

Photo by Lomig on Unsplash

Ayers’ Last Visit 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I watched as Ayers struggled to get the large chicken wire cage out of the back seat of his car. His brother-in-law finally came around and helped him with it. The cage held the old tomcat from Ayers’ barn.

I held the door for them as they carefully fit the cage through the door. I had not seen Ayers since Nessie had died a couple of years ago.

Ayers had aged in that time. He was a shadow of the man he used to be. His shoulders were still square and broad, but he was thin. His face lacked the luster it once possessed. There was a space in his eye socket, and his glass eye no longer filled the socket. It looked like it would fall out if he bent over.

“What do we have here?” I asked.

“This is George,” Ayers said. “It took me a long time to convince him that we were friends. But now he lets me sit on his hay bale and talk with him. He is right there every morning, waiting for his can of cat food.”

“He looks pretty good for a tomcat?” I said. “You must be feeding him well.”

“He is the only animal on the place,” Ayers said. “I sold all the sheep and the cows. Then Nessie died, and I didn’t even have any chores to do. George and I have been fast friends for the last year or more.”

“What’s going on with George today?” I asked.

“He has abscess back by his tail,” Ayers said. “It has been there for maybe a couple of weeks, and it breaks, opens and drains, and then closes up. Just when I start thinking it is all healed, it will break open again.”

“That’s pretty common for that location,” I said. “We can clean it up and put a drain in there for a few days, and it will heal with no problem. Do you want me to neuter him at the same time?”

“Doc, you are getting way ahead of things now,” Ayers said. “For one thing, I’m not sure I will ever be able to get him in this cage again. It took both of us, and there for a while, I thought Allen here was trying to stuff me into the darn thing. Allen is only here for a couple of days. I don’t think there will be an option to bring George back to take a drain out.”

“I can work with that,” I said. “I will treat him like we did in the old days, nothing fancy. We made a big hole that would allow the inside to heal before the skin closed things up again. It works fine, but the ladies don’t like to look at that big hole.”

“Good, and I hope the antibiotics can go in his food,” Ayers said.

“Yes, we can try that,” I said. “But just in case George won’t eat it, I will give him a dose of long-acting penicillin. In fact, with the big hole, we could probably get by with that injection.”

“So we can pick him up this afternoon?” Ayers asked.

“Yes, we can be done with him pretty soon, and he will be ready to go home pretty much anytime this afternoon.”

Ayers and Allen stood up to go, and Ayers spoke to George. “You be good to this guy. He is really our friend.”

“What about neutering George?” I asked.

Ayers took a deep breath and looked at George for a full minute.

“Doc, I’m not going to be around for much longer,” Ayers said. “This old guy is going to have to fend for himself then. I would guess that my place will just fade into history and be cut up into a bunch of hobby farms for Californians. George will need all the help he can muster to survive out there. I don’t think I want to do that to him. You can vaccinate him and give him a worm pill, if you’re man enough, but let’s leave him with his nuts.”

“Why does this abscess appear to heal up and then break open again?” Allen asked.

“It is due to the location,” I said. “It is there on the flat of his back, and there is no way for the abscess to drain well. The cat’s skin grows over these wounds so fast that the pus just gets trapped under the skin again. These days, we put a little rubber drain in the wound. All it does is keep the hole open, so we get good drainage. We will just remove a large patch of skin from over the abscess with George. That will give the wound plenty of time to heal before it is covered with skin again. And with antibiotics, it should heal with no problem.”

“I will have Ayers back here around four this afternoon,” Allen said. “Will that work okay?”

“That will be fine,” I said. “George will be wide awake, and I should be able to worm him and get him vaccinated by then.

***

We took George in the back to get to work on him.

“Are you going to try to worm him before surgery?” Ruth asked.

“I think I will wait, maybe do it when he is a little sleepy still,” I said. “Sometimes, working with these mean-looking tomcats is surprisingly easy. They know if things get bad, they can tear you up, and then things over.”

We struggled to get George into a cat bag, but things went along okay once he was stuffed in there. 

Anesthesia was induced with gas via a mask. I shaved the abscess area with a straight razor and trimmed a quarter-size piece of debilitated skin from over the abscess. We flushed the wound with hydrogen peroxide and applied an antibiotic powder.

As soon as George was recovered, I grabbed his head with my left hand, holding it much like a baseball. I tipped his head back, pointing his nose straight in the air. This caused his mouth to gap open slightly. With the worm pill held by my thumb and index finger of my right hand, I opened his mouth wide with my middle finger. Then, with the precision of a bombardier, I dropped the pill onto the very back of George’s tongue. I allowed the mouth to close slightly, and he swallowed. A quick peek, the pill was gone.

I gave George a four-way vaccine for distemper and the upper respiratory viruses and a feline leukemia vaccine. We also gave him a rabies vaccine and a large dose of long-acting penicillin.

“It doesn’t sound like he will be getting any boosters,” Ruth said.

“No, but something is better than nothing,” I said. “The rabies vaccine will be effective for a year, probably more. The feline distemper vaccine is probably one of the best vaccines ever. I have never seen a vaccinated cat come down with distemper, even with only one dose. I think it will probably last a lifetime for guys like George, who will get some natural exposures along the way. The others are better than nothing.”

George was almost excited to get back into his cage. 

“He must know this is his ticket home,” Ruth said.

Allen came in and picked up George in his cage for Ayers. I went out and shook Ayers’ hand as they were getting ready to leave.

“Ayers, if you have any concerns about how George is doing, you let me know,” I said. “It is no problem for me to run out to your place to look at him.

***

True to his words, Ayers did not last long following this last visit. His farm was chopped up into five-acre parcels, and I would guess that George was back to fending for himself in the farm/forest zone.

Photo by Piers Olphin from Pexels.