D. E. Larsen, DVM

Hardware disease results from the indiscriminate eating habits of the cow. It was frequently seen when hay was baled with wire. Any stray sharp metal, like a nail, could be involved. The hardware will fall into the reticulum, considered the second stomach. The cow’s heart lies just on the other side of the diaphragm from the reticulum. Then when the wire pierced the reticulum and the diaphragm, it would poke into the heart. This can cause acute discomfort and rarely rapid death, but more likely a slow death from an infection around the heart and chronic heart failure.

My first recollection of a cow with hardware was with our Linda cow at Broadbent. Named after my sister, Linda cow was a Jersey cross cow. Of all our cows, she was the least attractive. Probably crossed with a Guernsey, she was mostly white with some orangish brindle coloration.

In the early 1950s, hardware disease was treated with surgery. The rumen was opened on the left side, and the operator would remove some of the content, and then reach anteriorly to the reticulum and extract the offending wire. Dr. Crawford, a veterinarian from Coquille, did the surgery on Linda. She carried an ugly scar for the rest of her life, which was not unusual with that surgery.

By the 1960s, hardware disease was treated with a magnet given orally to the cow. The magnet would fall into the reticulum, secure the offending hardware, and through regular stomach activity, withdraw it into the stomach. It would stay there, with the magnet until it rusted away.

We had one valuable cow that was treated at Colorado State University Veterinary Hospital while I was in school. It was suffering from severe pericarditis (infection around the heart) from hardware disease. In a last-ditch effort to save the cow, they removed one rib section and opened the pericardium to the outside. They could flush this area a few times a day. The problem was a large amount of inflammatory tissue in the pericardium became constrictive as it aged, and the treatment failed.

My first case of hardware disease after graduation occurred in Enumclaw. Andy had called with a steer that was not doing well.

“I don’t know what is going on with him, Doc,” Andy said. “He just stands mostly and walks sort of stiff-legged when he does move.”

Andy had the steer in his old dairy barn, just loose in the stanchion area.

“Let me get my rope, and we will get a look at him,” I said.

When the lasso landed over his head on the first throw, it surprised but the steer and me. He jumped to the right, and then back to the left, and then he fell over dead.

“What the heck happened to him?” Andy said in amazement.

A quick necropsy showed a five-inch wire poking into his heart. Had I been able to restrain him quickly, a magnet possibly would have saved him. 

“My guess is you are feeding hay baled with wire,” I said. 

“Yes, I just got a new load of alfalfa,” Andy said. 

“I would suggest you give all your other cows a magnet,” I said. “It is pretty easy to do, and it is a good preventative for this type of thing. Although it is rare to see a steer drop dead like this one.”

“So, was that in the hay or did I do that when I opened the bale,” Andy asked.

“There is no answer to that question,” I said. “I guess it doesn’t matter to this guy.”

“Can we eat him?” Andy asked.

“I guess that depends on how hungry you are,” I said. “He doesn’t qualify according to the food inspection criteria. He probably had a temperature and some inflammation. Obviously, you could eat him, but I don’t think the meat will be very good.”

And then there was the call from Barney. Barney was my very first call in Sweet Home. I had only been in town for a couple of days when the phone rang.

“Doc, this is Barney. Stan over at the feed store told me you were in town. I have a cow that stopped eating a couple of days ago and she is just not doing very well. I sure would like for you to get a look at her.”

“Barney, I am really not ready to do any calls,” I said. “I don’t have most of my equipment and drugs yet.”

“If you could just look at her,” Barney said. “If I have to call Albany, it will take them 3 days to get out here. It is going to be great, having you in town.”

“Okay, I will get a look at her, but no promises,” I said.

Barney’s place was up Ames Creek. He had several acres and a couple of cows. I pulled into the driveway in our car as I didn’t have a truck yet. Barney was waiting to greet me.

“Hi, I am Barney. I hated to pressure you, Doc,” Barney said as he shook my hand. “But you have to realize how difficult it has been to get a veterinarian out here in the past. Everybody is excited that you are coming to town.”

“I’m glad to meet you, Barney,” I said. “I am here, it is just that I am not quite organized yet. Shipments of equipment and supplies are coming everyday but the clinic is way behind schedule. The little 2 bedroom apartment we have rented is bursting at the seams. We have boxes stacked to the ceiling. But let’s get a look at this cow of yours. Oh, by the way, Barney, you are my very first client in Sweet Home.”

Barney’s cow, Rosebud, was a Hereford. She was in good shape, in fact, probably a little overfed. I would guess she was 5 or 6 years old. Doing an exam showed a slightly elevated temperature and much reduce rumen motility. Everything else was within normal limits.

“How long has she been sick, Barney?” I asked.

“I noticed that she stopped eating a couple of days ago. She has just been standing around, not moving much.”

I squatted beside Rosebud on her left side. I leaned against her belly with my elbows on my knees.  I placed both hands in the center of her belly, close to the edge of her ribs. Then with a hard push upward, like a punch in the gut, I jiggled her entire abdomen.

Rosebud let out a noticeable groan. Almost a diagnostic pain response for hardware disease.

“She has wire, Barney,” I said.

“A wire, what are you talking about?” Barney said. 

“Cows aren’t very discriminating when they are chewing on hay,” I said. “If there is a wire in that hay, it goes right on down. It falls into the reticulum, a little pouch on the front on the rumen. If the wire happens to puncture the wall, it is a very short distance to the heart.”

“So, what do we do about it?” Barney asked. “It seems I have heard about them doing surgery because of a wire.”

“At this stage in the game, we rarely have to do surgery,” I said. “I will give her a magnet and some long-acting sulfa boluses. I just happen to have both of those. That should take care of things in a day or two.”

“That sounds better than surgery,” Barney said. “Do I have to do anything with her?”

“You just keep an eye on her,” I said. “Call if she is worse tomorrow. I will give you a call or probably just drop by when you get off work in a couple of days. Since you are my first call, I don’t have a lot to do just yet. I should have plenty of time to look after her.”

Rosebud recovered in a couple of days and returned to her normal appetite and activities. Barney became a good client, friend, and neighbor for a few years that we lived on Ames Creek. And he was always proud of the title of my first client in Sweet Home.

Photo by Stephen Wheeler on Unsplash

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I struggled to secure the cow with a rope tied to a fence post and a sideline to hold her still enough for me to do a pregnancy exam. I looked over this place while I was working. 

Big house, too fancy for my style, and a large guest house. All the driveways are paved. The barn is almost falling down, and this corral is the only thing for handling cows. No crowding ally and no squeeze chute.

When I was growing up, any spare money went into the barn first. The house was meant for living in, not to be a showplace. All the women in the extended family complained, but nothing changed.

I finally had this cow secured, the pregnancy exam only took a moment. My first boss would have said to linger a bit, so the client felt he got his money worth. My left hand ran into feet and a nose before I was up to my elbow in the rectum. 

“She is pregnant, probably about 7 months along,” I said. “But it is difficult to be accurate in the third trimester. I would say plus or minus a month. If I do a pregnancy exam between 40 and 90 days, I can be very accurate.”

“I just wanted to know if she was going to calve,” Howard said. “All my other cows have calved, and it is still going to be a couple of months before she calves?”

“Did she have problems calving last year,” I said as I released the cow.

“She had retained membranes,” Howard said. “I had problems getting someone to take care of her. The first vet I called, a young guy like you, looked at her but wouldn’t clean her. He said it is better not to do that. So anyway I had to call an older guy out of Albany. He cleaned her, and said she should be fine.”

“You know, things are always changing in medicine and veterinary medicine,” I said. “Treating a cow with retained fetal membranes is one of those things that have changed. We now know that manually removing those membranes does more harm than good, unless they are loose and just need a little tug. Had you gone with the first recommendation, she would have had some breeding issues, but nothing like this.”

“The old guys have been cleaning cows forever,” Howard said. “You young guys come out here and think you know everything.”

“The proof is in the pudding, my Grandfather always said,” I said. “One cow doesn’t prove much, but all the research says, treat the cow, remove the membranes if they are loose, but never manually remove the membranes. Had you called me last year, I would have told you the same thing.”

“So what do you think I should do now,” Howard said.

“She will never recover the lost time,” I said. “You will have to have a separate calving season just for her, or you will need to hold her over a year to get her back onto the herd schedule. I would sell her, let someone else fit her into their herd.”

“You might have a point there,” Howard said. “I will have to give it some thought. You probably have a bunch of recommendations to make about how to run this place.”

“I have some standard recommendations to help ranchers shorten the calving season and improve their herds,” I said. “Most of those recommendations require working the entire herd once or twice a year. To do that, the first thing you need to do is upgrade this corral. You need a squeeze chute and a crowding ally.”

“You expect me to spend a thousand dollars before you even get started,” Howard said. “I don’t think so.”

“That’s fine, but I won’t be much help to you then,” I said. “Most of those upgrades will only make your life easier. And there is no way to work a herd of cows on the end of a rope.”

It was my guess that I would not be back to Howard’s place any time soon. He will have to have some wreck before he calls again. And then he will really be pissed when I decline his herd.

Retained membranes remained a thorn in my side for several years. The older veterinarians in the valley continued to clean cows. My recommendations were unyielding but also, often taken with a grain of salt. I figured it would be that way until I had some grey hair show up.

Then, just when I thought there was only one way to do things, Mrs. Guerin called.

“I have a heifer in the barn that needs to be cleaned,” Mrs. Guerin said to Judy. “My husband left her in a small pen in the barn. The Doctor can take care of her and then come to the house, and I will pay him.”

“When did she calve?” Judy asked. “Doctor Larsen doesn’t like to look at these cows until at least 3 days after calving.”

“She calved yesterday,” Mrs. Guerin said. “I want her taken care of now.”

When I pulled into the driveway, I noticed that this was an old place. The house was old, and the barn was old. But according to directions, I pulled up to the barn and had no trouble finding the heifer. She had a small calf by her side. There was probably little chance that these membranes were loose.

The heifer was almost tame, and I had no problem getting her tied up and doing an exam. I was able to remove some of the membranes, but for the most part, the bulk of the mass would not budge. I instilled 5 grams of Tetracycline powder into the uterus and gave the heifer some long-acting sulfa boluses that would give her 5 days of therapy.

After cleaning up, I pulled the truck over to the house as Mrs. Guerin had instructed. I knocked on the door.

Mrs. Guerin opened the door. This lady could have passed for Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies. She must have been close to 80 years old, her grey hair was tied in a bun, her wire-rimmed glasses sort of balanced on her thin nose.

“Good afternoon,” I said. “I am Dr. Larsen. I just took care of your heifer in the barn.”

“Did you get her cleaned?” Mrs. Guerin asked bluntly.

“Well, I treated her with antibiotics, both in her uterus and orally,” I explained. “She will do much better if we leave those membranes to come out on their own in a few days.”

“You mean you didn’t clean her out,” she said.

“The current thinking is that it is better to allow those membranes to come out on their own,” I explained. “These heifers will breed back a lot better that way. If we manually remove those membranes, there is enough damage to the uterus that it adversely affects the fertility of the cow.”

Mrs. Guerin listened carefully to my explanation.

“That’s okay, then, if you don’t want to clean her,” she said. “I will just have my husband shoot her when he gets home. I won’t have a sick cow on the place.”

I think this old lady just nailed me and my treatment philosophy to the wall.

“Okay, we don’t have to shoot her,” I said. “I will go and clean her out. She will be fine.”

So back to the barn I went. This little heifer became the only cow that I manually removed membranes. I found it a difficult task, peeling the membrane attachment from the individual cotyledons, those ‘buttons’ that in the bovine uterus to which the placenta attaches. I just hoped that she would get pregnant this summer.

Photo by Luke Besley on Unsplash