The Terrible Breech

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Doc, this is Peter, out on Brush Creek,” Peter says on the phone. “I have been working on trying to pull this calf for two hours now. I am not getting anywhere. Do you have time to run out here and give me a hand?”

“Sure, I can come right away,” I said. “You caught me just at the right time. What is going on with her.”

“This morning, I noticed her with her tail up and sort of standing around a little odd,” Peter said. “When I ran her into the barn and got her tied up, I saw this tail hanging out of her. I cleaned her up like you always do and started working. There is just this butt of the calf in the birth canal. I can’t get ahold of anything.”

“Sounds like you have a calf in a full breech position,” I said. “I should be able to take care of that with little problem. At this point in time, almost all of these calves are dead. I mention that just so you know. When the calf is in a full breech, there is nothing to engage the cervix. The cow doesn’t usually go into hard labor for a day or sometimes two.”

“I can understand that,” Peter said. “But we have to get it out of there. I would guess you might have to do a C-section.”

“That all depends. Most of the time, I can get the hind legs up and just pull the calf. If not, I usually do a fetotomy. I don’t like to do a C-section on a dead calf unless there is no other option.”

“I have her in the barn. There is no need to stop at the house,” Peter said.

Peter and his young son, Tom, were waiting at the barn door when I pulled up in my truck. Peter was in his late 40s and usually looked too well dressed to be a rancher. Today, that was not the case. His hat was sitting crooked on his head, and it failed to conceal his uncombed hair. He had a swab of blood and mucus across his forehead. Both sleeves of his shirt were bloodied to his shoulders.

“Tom, it looks like your dad has been working hard this morning,” I said.

“He is pretty tired,” Tom said.

“I don’t know how you guys do it?” Peter said. “I have been at this for two hours, and the only thing I have accomplished is to wear myself out.”

“There are a few tricks to learn,” I said. “The most important thing to learn in bovine obstetrics is to set a clock on yourself. If you haven’t accomplished anything in 20 minutes, you need to do something else. That means you should have called me about an hour and a half ago.”

“That’s what Mom said,” Tom said.

“Well, that is enough of the storytelling. Let me get a look at what we have going on,” I said.

Working on a cow that the owner has struggled with for two hours has its own set of hazards. The untrained hands can do all sorts of damage. I have seen ruptured uteruses, broken legs on the calves, and gross contamination of the whole track. That meant I had to check for all of that first, or it would fall on my shoulders.

“I see you have her cleaned up well. That is a good thing.”

“I have watched you before,” Peter said. 

I washed the cow one more time and ran my hand into her vagina. The vagina and what uterus I could easily reach were intact. The calf’s rear end sort of worked like a cork in the birth canal. I stuck a finger in its rectum. No response; this was a dead calf.

“The calf is dead like I explained on the phone,” I said.

“How did you determine that so fast?” Peter asked.

“I stuck my finger in his butt. If he was alive, he would have responded to that. No response equals a dead calf.”

I ran my hand down under the calf. I could reach the hocks with no problem. Peter had stretched out the birth canal in his earlier efforts. I had no trouble getting down and grabbing a cannon bone. With a firm grip on the middle of the cannon bone, I pushed the hock forward to provide room to pull the hoof up into the birth canal. In one motion, I pulled the leg back, and the foot popped out of the vulva. I quickly reached in and repeated the process on the second leg. Now it was a simple extraction in posterior presentation.

“Doc, you embarrass me,” Peter said. “I have been working on her for two hours, and you come along and have the feet out in two minutes, and that includes time for some idle conversation.”

“It is just a matter of knowing a few tricks of the trade,” I said. “Give me a hand. I think we can pull this guy out of here with no problem.”

Tom was quick to jump in to help. At twelve, he was getting strong enough to consider himself almost a man. With the two of us, we quickly pulled the calf. It flopped lifelessly on the ground, and the membranes followed with a splatter of fluid. Tom jumped back, trying to avoid the mess, but it was too late. His pant legs were covered with fluid and mucus.

“One more lesson for today,” I said. “You always want to go back and check the cow. You check for another calf, and you check for any injury to the birth canal. Today, because you worked on her for so long, I will put some antibiotics into that uterus. That probably makes me feel better than it does her any good. Whatever I put in will drain out in a couple of hours.”

I finished up and cleaned up, and we turned the cow out.

“You want to watch her closely for a day or two. Just in case she develops an infection in her uterus.”

“And Tom, it was a good experience for you to be surprised by that splash of fluid. When I was in the delivery room with our first baby, I was surprised at the gush of blood that came with the membranes.”

Tom didn’t say anything but looked at his pant legs with a frown.

“Can I put another calf on her?” Peter asked.

“Sure, most cows will take another calf,” I said. “If you have an orphan or buy one at the sale. There are all sorts of tricks. Keep them in a small pen for a few days. Maybe take the skin off that dead calf’s back and tie it around the new calf, or smear the new calf with the membranes.”

“I will give it a try,” Peter said. “And thanks, Doc. You are good at the things that you do.”

Photo by Erik Mclean from Pexels.

The Lasso and the Wire

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Andy, how long has this guy been sick,” I asked.

Andy was an old Italian with a small acreage on which he ran a few steers to fatten every year.  He was bald as a billiard ball, short and, shall we say, a well-rounded individual.

We were standing in the middle section of his old dairy barn, where he had milked a herd of 20 cows. In those years, the late 1930s, 20 dairy cows would support a family. And with the support of his wife and two boys, he could work at an outside job that allowed the family to live quite well.

The steer stood looking at us through the stanchions. He was locked in the milking section of the barn and had free movement in the reasonably confined space that measures 16 by 40 feet. This steer was in good shape and probably approaching a year of age. He moved with guarded steps.

“I noticed last night that he wasn’t eating much,” Andy said. “Then this morning, he almost doesn’t want to move. I had a heck of a time running him into the barn. And the whole time I have been waiting for you, I bet he hasn’t taken a half dozen steps. He just stands there.”

“If he is not eating, we are probably not going to be able to entice him to stick his head in a stanchion,” I said. “Is he tame enough for me to put a halter on him?”

“You are probably going to have to rope him,” Andy said.

“That was not something that they taught in school,” I said. “But, you know, I am getting better at it all the time. I was talking to an older veterinarian South of here the other day. He said he has thrown his rope away. People want him to look at a cow; they have to have it caught.

“Are you going to do that?” Andy asked.

“I think I would starve to death around here,” I said.

“You make it too easy for people to take advantage of your rope,” Andy said. “But, like today, I wouldn’t be able to get this guy caught until my son got off work.”

“You might think about buying a squeeze chute, or maybe just a headgate on the end of a crowding alley.”

“I’m too old to be buying new things.”

“Yes, maybe, but you still do enough that it would probably make your life a lot easier. My brother-in-law says that if he had to do it over again, he would have bought a squeeze chute before he bought his first cow.”

“I will give it some thought,” Andy said. “But today, you are going to have to rope this guy.”

I laughed at the old man as I stepped into the milking side with my rope. This was going to be easy. The steer looked at me but never moved a muscle. I think I could have dropped the rope over his head, but I threw it from 8 feet away.

The lasso fell perfectly over the steers head. I pulled the rope tight. The steer jumped right with his front feet, fighting against the pull of the rope. Then he lurched to the left, stiffened, and fell on his side. His legs stuck straight out and quivered for a moment. Then everything was still.

I checked, he was dead.

I looked at Andy, standing there in a state between disbelief and shock. 

“What the hell happened?” Andy said.

“I don’t think he liked the rope.

“No, I mean, how did that happen?” Andy said.

“My guess is, if we open him up, we will find a wire sticking him in the heart.”

“I have heard of wire killing a cow,” Andy said. “But I thought it was a slow process.”

“That is usually the case. The way he was acting, I suspected a wire. I didn’t expect him to drop dead. It must have poked him in the heart and caused a cardiac arrest.”

“I am not going to be able to sleep now if we don’t find out what killed him,” Andy said. “I guess I better have you look.”

I grabbed my necropsy knife and opened the left side of the steer’s chest. Sure enough, a piece of baling wire, about 3 inches long, was sticking through the diaphragm and into the pericardium. It probably stuck the heart when he jumped. I showed Andy the wire.

  “Now explain to me how that got there,” Andy said.

“Cows are not very discriminating when they eat. If they encounter a piece of baling wire in the hay, they just eat it. It collects in the reticulum, a small pouch on the front of the rumen. Probably called the second stomach, it is where they get tripe. The wire or any foreign objects stay in the reticulum. The stomach works; the wire pokes through the wall of the reticulum, passes through the diaphragm. Then it pokes into the heart.”

“In the old days, they would do surgery and remove the wire. Today we just place a magnet. With normal stomach activity, it will pull the wire back into the reticulum and hold it there. We put magnets in all the dairy cows now, not so much in beef cows. Most of the time, if not treated, it does kill the cow slowly, from an infection around the heart.”

“Can I make hamburger out of this guy?” Andy asked.

“It depends on how hungry you are, Andy. These cases almost always have a low-grade temperature, which has probably been going on for several days before things got to the point where the wire was painful for him. I wouldn’t eat him, but it wouldn’t kill you.

“I guess it is just a loss,” Andy said. “Sort of a waste, but if you wouldn’t eat it, that is good enough for me.”

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

Blackjack and Newt

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Joleen, are you still feeding that feral tomcat out the back door?” I asked.

“I don’t think he is really feral. I am going to catch him one of these days.”

“Catch him. If you get ahold of him, it will be a question mark as to who has caught who,” I said.

Our original clinic on Nandina Street had a large patch of berry vines across the alley from the clinic. That patch of briers was home to a sizable population of feral cats. Joleen had taken a liking to this young black tomcat. She was convinced she could catch him and tame him down.

A couple of weeks later, Joleen came out of the back and washed her hands at the front sink.

“I got him,” she said as if it was no big deal. “I threw him into the isolation ward. It wasn’t so hard. I didn’t even get scratched.”

“What are you going to do with him,” I asked.  

“I figure if we neuter, vaccinate and deworm him, then leave him in a kennel for a time, he should tame down just fine. Then I will either take him home, or we could make a clinic cat out of him.”

“I’m not sure about a clinic cat,” I said.

But, so began Blackjack’s sojourn in the clinic. 

Our first adventure was transferring him from the isolation room, a small bare room at the time, into a cage in the kennel room. He was not going to be fooled by Joleen’s gentle nature again. It took a capture pole and a lot of clawing and biting at the end of the rod to accomplish the transfer. 

Finally secured in a kennel, we made plans to secure his future.

“We are not going to have a tomcat in here for long,” I said. “There is nothing that will stink up a vet clinic worse than tomcat pee.”

“We have time; you can neuter him this afternoon,” Joleen said.

One more wrestling match, and I had an injection of Ketamine into Blackjack. Joleen took the opportunity to comb him out. Blackjack was a short-haired cat, black as could be, but he had been living in the briers for some time now and needed to be spruced up a bit.

Then we neutered, vaccinated, and dewormed him.

“He will be a new man in the morning after his brain surgery,” I said.

Blackjack tamed down in a surprisingly short time. In a couple of weeks, he was given a limited run of the clinic. It was not long that we recognized that he enjoyed people and the cats that were with them. Coming off the street, he was very dog-wise. He could greet a few of the dogs that came through the door. But most of them he avoided with the skills only learned by a feral lifestyle.

He was controlled by the smell of the canned food. Joleen would pop the seal on a can of cat food, and Blackjack would come running from anywhere. 

There came a day when Blackjack wanted out the door.

“Do we dare let him out,” Joleen asked, more to herself than to me.

“I think he knows where his home is by now. My guess is he will be back before closing time.”

That was the case. About 4:00, Joleen heard him meowing at the back door. He came in for his can of cat food and then headed to his kennel for the night.

It was not long, and he would come and go by the front door. He learned to scurry through the door as a client would come or go. Jumping up on the counter and almost scaring some lady who had not noticed him following her through the door.

Most clients loved Blackjack, and he loved to sit on the front counter and accept any pats handed out by clients. But unfortunately, not all clients. One of our ‘Cat Ladies’ thought we provided Blackjack a terrible existence. 

“It is not right for him to be cooped up in here all the time,” she would say. “He should be in a home, where he is loved.”

“Mary, he has the run of this place,” I said. “He can come and go as he pleases, and his life here is far better than his old life.”

“Well, that may be, but I think he deserves a real home,” Mary said.

It was some months after that conversation that Blackjack left by the front door of the clinic one afternoon and never returned. We looked on the neighborhood streets and through the feral cat colony. There was never a trace of him.

“I bet she took him,” Joleen said. “Poor Blackjack, his life here was far better than she will ever provide.”

“There is no way we will ever know. There are a hundred ways that a cat can meet his fate in this world. We gave him the best we could while he was in our care. And I doubt she would have been capable of catching him out on the street.”

We were still in a sort of grieving status over Blackjack’s loss when Kathy burst through the front door with a limp kitten in her hands.

“The highway crew found this guy in the ditch by our house,” Kathy said. “It looks like he has taken a big whack on the head, but he is alive.”

“If you guys can do something for him, that is fine,” Kathy said. “I can’t afford to do anything for him.”

“We will look him over and see if he is savable,” Joleen said. “If he recovers, we can maybe find him a home.”

This kitten was about 6 weeks old and had a patch of hair gone on the top of his head. Still unconscious, he must have been hit by a car. When I started handling the kitten, he began to stir a little. Other than the patch of missing hair on his head, he looked fine.

I gave him a dose of Dexamethasone, and Joleen went back to settle him in a kennel. Or so I thought. She carried him around in a towel for the rest of the morning. 

By noon, the little tabby kitten was back to normal function. We offered him some canned food, and he acted like he hadn’t eaten in a week.

“It looks to me like you have your next clinic cat,” Joleen said.

After devouring his lunch, he was screaming for more. And I did say screaming.

“He sounds like he would make a good Speaker of the House. Maybe we should name him Newt,” I said.

Newt grew up in the clinic. Will, he spent most of his first year in the clinic. The clinic was his domain, he had free run of the place during the day, and we would put him in a large kennel overnight. His voice was the first thing one heard when we came through the door in the morning. He knew he got his breakfast and that the kennel door would be left open.

Newt enjoyed people, and they loved him. He would often perch on the front counter, acting as a greeter. He seemed to have no interest in going through the front door.

He was close to a year old when Bill and Opal were in with Mucho for a check-up. When they completed their visit, they purchased a 25-pound bag of C/D cat food. We were a little surprised when Opal came back into the clinic with the bag of food.

“This bag has a hole in the corner,” Opal said. 

Sure enough, there was a small hole in the bag and evidence of scratch and bite marks.

“That looks like Newt has been helping himself to some free meals,” I said. “We will refund that money. Do you want to keep this bag, at no cost, or do you want another one?” 

“Oh,” Opal said. “We can keep this one if you can tape it up. We really don’t want our money back.” 

I grabbed some packing tape and closed the hole. “You really don’t have any choice, Opal,” I said. “Sandy has already reversed the charge. If I take it back, we will just throw it away. So you may as well get the use of it.”

When Opal left, I went back and inspected our inventory. Newt made good choices. The bland diet foods for liver or kidney failure were not touched. But every bag of C/D had a small hole in the corner.

“Newt, I think you just got canned,” I said. Newt looked at me in a very aloof manner. “I think you earned a trip to the house. I can’t afford to lose hundreds of dollars in inventory to a cat that doesn’t produce any income for the clinic.”

That night Newt went home with us. This transition to the house went off without a hitch. He was quick to stake out his corner on the foot of our bed as he settled into a long life in the Larsen household.

Photo by David Bartus from Pexels

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