A Bad Monday

There are Mondays and then there are Mondays like yesterday that just start off bad.  If you follow me on Facebook, you know that yesterday was a Monday in every since of the word.

I awoke with a horrible sinus headache...one that pounded my head with every step I took.  I must have looked real bad, because my awesome hubby said I could stay home and his dad would help feed.  Yeah, I had to look real bad, because I've tried to call in sick and it hardly ever works.  Anyway, I was staring at my computer when the phone rang an hour later to tell me we had a cow with a uterine prolapse.

These are never good we all prefer when things go according to "the plan".  Often, the cow goes into shock and dies before we find them.  If we can help them get things put back in place and treat the shock, we have a chance at least. 

The calf was HUGE!  The guys guessed it weighed 120 pounds at least.  She amazingly had him by herself, but things didn't stop pushing when she got the calf out and out popped her uterus, too.  Not good.  

It was probably a good thing at the time that she was partially paralyzed at this point.  We've seen cows have way more hanging out and running around the pasture.  That is no good as they rip their uterus.  I snapped this picture after I administered drugs prescribed by the vet to help with the shock. He was pretty sure she may have been dead before he got there had I not given her the drugs.

The guys got her rolled up on her belly, so gravity would work for them putting things back into place.  Usually, I am in my father in law's position and not able to take pictures.  Usually, these happen at 11:00 at night or 2:00 am in the sleet and rain and snow.  But I digress.  The feed sacks are important!  As the vet got things cleaned up best he could, I slipped the bags underneath, so the uterus had something cleaner than the ground to rest on.

As he started pushing we saw something that none of us liked.  She had torn a whole in her uterus that A LOT of blood was coming from.  (She did pick one of the few brushy spots to have her calf in and we guessed that one of the broken shoots caused the tear.)  The vet had to stop for a minute and attempt to sew that spot closed and we hoped for the best.  They continued to push and push and finally "the basketball sized mass went into the softball sized hole."

To keep things from falling back out, he put some big ol' stitches across her...well you can see where.  These obviously aren't dissolvable stitches.

We took the rope off of her and let her rest and prayed she would make it.

My husband took a tractor and loader back up to the pasture to let her stand up.  Dairy Carrie has talked about doing this in her post Sometimes We are Mean to Our Cows.    She is paralyzed on her back legs, but is trying to stand which is great news.  A 1100 pound cow that doesn't want to try isn't going to make it.  We also gave her some antibiotics, Vitamin K to help with blood clotting and some injectable minerals to help with healing.

Then I had to tend to a calf who's mama was in no condition to feed him.  In fact, she didn't even clean him up very well.  I gave him a bottle of colostrum replacer.  Colostrum is the first milk a mom produces after giving birth.  It is full of antibodies that help the calf develop it's own immune system, but it needs to be fed within 6 hours of birth.  The gut lining starts to close to antibodies after 6 hours.

I  gave him a bottle and had the guys help me get him in the barn.  He didn't really want to stand up and my head was back to pounding at this point, so I let him be.

When the boys got home from school, I told them that they were in charge of feeding the calf.  That's when they noticed his tendons were bending his feet back.  Poor calf was running out of room inside mama and was crunched anywhere he could be.  We splinted his legs to straighten them and will leave those on just a couple of days.

His eyes are also incredibly blood shot after the difficult birth.  I am guessing that he was at least 2 weeks over due!

To give you an idea of just how big this calf is, my husband is 6 foot 3.  Those little 60 pound calves make standing up look easy.  Apparently, it is harder when you are trying to coordinate 120 pounds of bulk.

So, how was your Monday?  Do you feel better about it?  I know I didn't think my sinus infection was quite as bad as I originally thought it was after helping with these two!  Now, I am off to see how everyone is dong and praying I don't have to have the talk about All Living Things Die.
-A Kansas Farm Mom

Cattle Farmer Math

In an effort to make math more interesting for kids and to make my kids understand that math really is important, I have started a series of Farmer Math questions to go along with the Flat Aggie reports.  These are patterned after the blog Bedtime Math.  Some of the questions are easy enough for pre-schoolers and sometimes I come up with some to even challenge high school seniors.

These questions follow the report Flat Aggie Visits a Manitoba Beef Farm.  Additional educational materials can be found in the post All About Beef.

Flat Aggie has decided to follow a calf number 101 on the Nelson Ranch a little further.  I think this math lesson may challenge some of my older readers to think.

1.  Flat Aggie has enough ear tags for Calf 101 plus 2 more, but 12 calves were born overnight. How many more eartags does he need to make, so that all the calves that are born will have an eartag? 

2.  Calf 101 weighed 65 pounds at birth and 650 pounds at weaning.  What is his total weight gain?

3.  Calf 101 is weaned at 205 days of age.  What is his average daily gain (rounded to the nearest hundreth)? (Average daily gain is the average amount of weight he gained each day for the 205 days)

4.  Calf 101 weighed 650 pounds at the Nelson Ranch and was shipped on a trailer to a neighboring farm where he was weighed again and only weighed 640 pounds.  How many pounds did he shrink?

5.  What percent  of his weight did he shrink? (Percent Shrink is the percentage of an animal's weight that is lost during transport from one place to another relative to its full live weight before it was transported)

If you are a teacher or homeschooler that would like more information to go with the Flat Aggie reports, send me a message on my contact form.  Along with the report and the Farmer Math questions, we send each teacher an additional page of activities, crossword puzzles and sometimes a few hands on activities.

ANSWERS
1.) 10 eartags  2.) 585 pounds  3.) 2.85 pounds per day  4.) 10 pounds  5.) 1.5%

-A Kansas Farm Mom

I Tried to Call in Sick, But No One Answered

Some days I just want to call in sick.  Like today.  I went to bed with achy joints, a congested head and was in a hoody and wind pants(it was at least 75* in the house).  I tried to call in sick, but no one answered.  Now, let's be honest as much as The Farmer and I like to say we are in charge, we aren't.  Mother Nature and the cows are in charge.  Whether we want to go to work at not, the cows still NEED to be fed.  The ones that haven't had their babies yet still need to be checked on.  The new babies need to be checked on to make sure they aren't getting sick.  The new bottle calf still needs his bottle two times a day.

Since I drug my happy rear end out of the house, I got to see this when I arrived at the last pasture.

 

We fed the other cows on the other side of the paddock hoping she would lay down, have a few contractions and we could see the calf.  I was concerned that the placenta was still totally intact.  If a cow does not get up quickly, an intact placenta can suffocate a calf.  We actually lost one calf to a placenta not getting removed earlier this year.

We came back in a few minutes and she had pushed the calf out a little bit more.

We thought we would help her out, but she didn't think she needed it.  The calf was stuck in her pelvis and was pinching a nerve making it hard for her to walk.  We really tried to refrain from the commentary that we were sure the calf was giving...at least we knew his lungs had drained all the amniotic fluid out of them.

We decided that we would give her 5 minutes of peace hoping she would lie down and have a big contraction and deliver a calf.  We watched from the other side of the pasture with binoculars.

We came back and lo and behold...she didn't need us after all.  I guess I could have called in sick.

-A Kansas Farm Mom

Warming Baby Calves

The last few days have been uncommonly cold here in Southern Kansas.  We are used to 30 and 40 degree temperatures during February not a week of single digits.  We are used to having a few cold days, so we do have some extra equipment when we have calves born on those cold days.  Compared to some of our neighbors we are overly ready for cold weather.  We work really hard before the calves start coming to make sure everything is ready for the new babies.

Most of the calves that have trouble on cold days are either twins or born to one of our "teenage mothers."  It is hard for a cow to get one calf cleaned off on a single digit day, but it is nearly impossible for her to get 2 dried off on an extremely cold day.

One of the best investments we have ever made was what we call a hot box.  It starts with this little heater.  It will warm the air quite a bit, but we have found if you really need to warm a very cold calf it is best to bring the box to a heated garage or in the house.  (Sorry for the bad pictures and really dirty box, but it has been really busy today.  4 different calves visited the hot box today.)

 The heater blows air in through a hole in the side of the box.

The bottom of the box has 2 ridges about 3 inches high.

 

The ridges support a open grate floor.  I really think the open floor is the key to this working as good as it does.  It allows the calf to get warm air all the way around him and allows water to drip off.  We used to warm calves on blankets and rugs, but the bottom side of the calf would still be wet.

One end has a vent at the top.  We keep the vent all the way open if the calf is very wet.  The vent lets out excess moisture that builds up in the top.  We were told that if you don't keep it open, the excess moisture can build up and cause the calf to get pneumonia. 

The other end has rubber flaps.  The marketing company said this was so the when the calf gets warm it can walk out and back to its mother.  Honestly, even when we have had it in the barn where the calf could get back to its mom if it wanted we only had one calf leave the box.

 We added a rope to one end of the box.  The box is not heavy, but it is awkward to handle especially by yourself.

I have put some very cold calves in the box.  The first calf we put in it was pretty much a popcicle.  The guys even had a hard time getting him into the truck, because they couldn't bend him at all.

A really cold calf will stretch out and their neck will almost bend over their back if you let it. 

 This is the first year we have put 2 calves in the box.  These two weren't very big calves and fit, but once one tried to stand up it was clear the box wasn't big enough for both of them.

 Once the calves sit up like a normal calf, we usually feel like we are almost ready to go back to mama.  When the calves stand up and start making a lot of noise in the box, you know they are ready to go back outside...especially if they are in the house in the middle of the night and you want some sleep. 

Our box is by Roy L Heat.  Our vet has one from Koehn Manufacturing.  They both use the same heater.  The main design idea is the same, but there are a few differences.  The box seemed expensive until we saved the first calf.  It is one piece of equipment that has paid for itself many times over.

Don't be fooled that we save every calf.  We have to find them alive to get a chance.  We have had plenty of reminders this week that Every Living Thing Will Die.

How would you warm up a baby calf?

-A Kansas Farm Mom

Getting Ready for Bad Weather

Old Man Winter came back Sunday night with bitter cold north winds.  I did not stress out too much, because we spent all weekend preparing for this storm right at the beginning of calving season.  In addition to the usual stuff we gather for the barn, the mudroom and the people, we took advantage of the nice weather to get some other things ready.

We cleaned out the barn.  I was really wishing I could clean my house with the skid steer when I got done, but alas I couldn't take it inside.

 We moved in a couple of feed bunks and filled them with hay.

 My youngest son worked tirelessly in one pen to make the perfect calf bed and he tried it out.
 

Our barn is old and can be a bit drafty.  If we have a twin calf, orphan or one that needs to be separated from its mom, they get a hay palace that is insulated with hay bales.  While I hope I don't have to use it, I went ahead and built it this weekend.  Being out in extreme cold wears me out enough without having to do a lot of extra manual labor.

 

 When I got up to check the heifers (aka the Teenage Mothers of the Farm) at 3 am this morning, I found a tree had been blown over into the road. (I waited until daylight to take the picture.)

 

As soon as the boys went to school, we had a brand new calf born out in the wind.  We promptly moved her and her mother inside out of the wind for the day.  They sure liked the nice nest made of straw.

Later in the day, they were joined by a couple of others in neighboring pens.  The next morning they went out into the sunshine.  The wind had died down and they were all nice and dry and their tummies were full of milk.  Now, I need to go clean the barn and rebuild a couple of straw beds.

Our big project on Sunday was to build a wind break for the heifers.  A few of them really appreciated it yesterday, but my fingers were too cold to take a picture.  :)

After we got done with the winterizing, I went to the house to prepare for the boy's birthday party.  Luckily, they didn't request a Longhorn steer cake this year and were totally content with Cherry Cheese Pie and Not yo Mama's Banana Pudding.

Do you do anything different if a storm is coming?  Are you one of the thousands that goes to buy eggs, milk and bread or do you take more serious steps to prepare?  I would love to know!

-A Kansas Farm Mom