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

Did That Really Happen?

In May, I wrote about the possibility of eating our way out of ADHD after attending the +Alltech symposium.  I have a son that has really struggled with focus and we decided to try our own trial of adding Omega-3 DHA to his diet.  We have switched back to whole milk in the house, a natural source of Omega-3.  He has been eating lots of walnuts which are also a great source of Omega-3 DHA.  He has also been taking a daily supplement of Omega-3 DHA.

We started all of this after school was out for the summer.  I have seen little changes here and there.  He isn't as impulsive and quick tempered.  He wants to work on projects.  He reminds me what needs to be done and where things are when I have forgotten.

None of these little things could have prepared me for what I witnessed in the showring yesterday.  He has shown before, but his focus has always drifted from the judge to what is going on outside of the showring.  Not yesterday.  He went in the ring with professionalism and confidence that I have never seen in him before.  He knew exactly what to do.  He only wavered once, but the loss of focus was nothing compared to the loss of focus we witnessed in his competitors and he regained focus...something I have NEVER seen him do without some prompting from outside the showring. 

He remembered how to stand, how to get his calf to stand, to watch the judge, and stayed with all of it for at least 10 minutes.  That is a long time for an 8 year old with nothing, but a 300 pound calf to keep him on task.  A calf that has less focus than the boy and would like nothing more than to put his nose down and eat grass.  It left me asking myself, Did that really just happen?

This kid has tried my patience as a parent and as his calf showing coach, but today this young man showed me that possibly with the correct nutrition he is ready to take on the world.  I can not wait until school starts to see what he accomplishes this year.

If you would like to know more about the studies that I talked about in the last blog post, go to the Alltech Symposium Audio page, scroll to the bottom of the page to the Health and Wellness podcasts.  They do take a few hours to listen to, but I certainly encourage you to take the time.  Section 1 has Dr. Patrick Wall, whom I have spoke with personally, speaking about the Omega-3 and Omega 6 imbalance.  Section 2 has Dr. Aoife Lyons, clinical psychologist, speaking on brain development and studies looking at Omega-3 DHA supplementation and its possible effects on ADHD.

-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

BBR- Levi's Lost Calf

I started a series called the Book Barn Review last Spring and then Flat Aggie took over my life and I forgot about books.  I promise to start doing a better job at telling you what books are out there that tell some pretty good stories about farm and ranch life. 

Levi’s Lost Calf by Amanda Radke

Illustrated by Michelle Weber

My boys love books about farms and ranches.  They especially like ones that could very well be about them and their life on the farm.  A few years back I found the book Levi’s Lost Calf.  When my oldest son was finished reading it, he looked up at me and said that it was the best book he had ever read! Believe me, he has read a lot of books, so this was a HUGE compliment to the author.

Levi is much like my boys and helps out on the ranch.  The family is gathering cattle and his favorite heifer is missing.  As he, on horseback, along with his stock dog look for the calf they find a wide variety of wildlife and show the reader the sites of a typical farm.  

My boys loved seeing the wildlife on the ranch located in South Dakota which is a bit different from Southeast Kansas...we don't see pheasants every day!

Radke even does a great job of bringing a prayer into the end of the book.  A great way to end a bedtime story.  I love a book that leads the prayer for the kids.

Ya’ll know how much I love to cook.  There is a recipe I am going to have to try out in the back of the book for Hungry Cowboy Tin Foil dinners and a dessert option as well.  If it is too good to keep a secret, you know I will share it or some variation of it in my What's For Dinner Wednesday collection (with Amanda's permission of course).

I also like that there is a glossary of terms just like in Cowboy Small for those not accustomed to our vocabulary.  Us farmers and rancher speak a different language sometimes.  It is always good to go back a remind ourselves that we are only 2% of the population and not everyone talks like we do or understands what we are talking about at times.

I may be partial to this book because just as Amanda did I grew up showing Limousin cattle.  Although, I have never met Amanda it amazes me how many things we were both involved in just a decade or so apart.

You can find Amanda online at the Beef Daily Blog.  Follow her on Twitter.  If you are looking to buy a copy of the book, check out Cowgirl Crush, which happens to be an online store owned by Amanda's sister.

-A Kansas Farm Mom

 Check out the rest of my 30 days of Blogging and the other farm bloggers joining me.

Cattle Obstetrics

Calving season is starting to wrap up here on our farm.  Other ranches across the country are just starting.  Picking when to calve is a personal decision that is different for every operation.  We choose to calve in February and March, so we will be done before the crop farming gets busy in April.  I like to have a little help occasionally when a cow has trouble and they don't like to have to leave the tractor to help me.

Most of the older cows get along just fine without us, but we spend a lot of time with our heifers.  Heifers are cows who have never had a calf.  When I say a lot of time, I mean they have had us visit their pasture every 4-5 hours for the last 50 days...including at night.  (We are still waiting on 8 of them to calve as I write this.)  If everything goes right with calving, a rancher will never see the calf born.  We see a lot of this...

If you look closely, you can see the tip of one foot starting out of the birth canal.  Heifers are very nervous (just like people who have never had a baby.)  They also like to be by themselves usually.  We count the heifers A LOT.  It's no wonder that my kids are really good at math, they have helped count since they could ride along in the truck (about 3 weeks old).

Calving heifers will hide behind trees, brush and lay down in low spots just to be out of sight.  They don't like to be watched, so we usually leave them alone and come back later to check on them.  If all goes well, we come back in 30 minutes to an hour and see something like this...

It excites us even more if we come back to see the calf standing up or walking around the cow.  Maybe even nursing...can you see what the cow is doing???
Yes, she is cleaning up after child birth by eating the afterbirth.  When I was a kid, I thought this was totally gross.  My kids do too.  LOL  Coyotes (and skunks I found out this year) love to eat afterbirth.  The cows eat it to clean things up and not invite predators to their new calf.  It also returns valuable nutrients back into her body.

Since we are visiting the heifers continually, that includes at night.  We check them just before we go to bed and again sometime between 2 and 3 am.  Nap time is essential during calving season for the adults.  :)  Sometimes when you go out in the middle of the night you find this...

Scientists have found that if you feed cows their main meal at night, approximately 85% of the them will give birth during the daylight hours.  We feed our heifers at about 6 pm and had very few calves at night this year.  The older cows get fed in the morning and typically don't have too many delivery issues. 

The next morning we give most of the calves an eartag...

Tags really help us when a cow or calf is not feeling well.  We like to think of it similar to the matching hospital ID bracelets that mothers and babies get in the hospital.  If a calf needs to go to the barn for extra attention, mom needs to come along, too.

Snow days can make calving a challenge and lots of extra work.  Calves are cold, cows need extra feed and we have extra people in the cab of the truck (no school means it is take your kids to work day)...yeah, they don't like to have their picture taken with mom for her blog. Hehehe

But that does give us some time for some driving lessons...

and the boys are getting pretty good at opening gates for mom, too.

I would love to post of video of a cow giving birth, but my chances of catching it this year are slowly disappearing...which is fine with me.  That means there are lots of calves being born without my assistance.  I guess I will keep it on my bucket list of things to do or maybe the boys will record one for me over Spring Break.

-A Kansas Farm Mom

Snow Day! Oops, I mean Ice Day!!

We are super happy to get any moisture that falls from the sky these days.  We knew going into this storm that we would be right on the line between snow and sleet.  It turns out we were on the line between sleet and freezing rain.  So far, we still have power, but I am exhausted!  We fed the cows this morning in the rain and went back when the rain stopped to unroll hay, so the calves would have a dry place to sleep tonight off the icy ground.

I saw today that Beef Magazine is having a Winter on the Ranch photo contest.  I have numbered all the pictures and would love to have you let me know which pictures we should enter.  Farmer Randy took some of them and the boys helped out, too. 

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11. This little girl got a trip to my house for a couple of hours to warm up.  She is back with mom now in a barn for the night.

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With all the sleet on the ground, Farmer Randy thought we should have sno-cones.  :)

I am super tired from walking in the sleet and taking care of 3 calves that needed a little extra attention.  Let me know your favorite picture either here in the comments or on my Facebook page.

-A Kansas Farm Mom

And He Named The Little Heifer...

I want to thank you all for all the names that you sent via Facebook or the comments on the last blog post.  My little man had quite a list of names to choose from for his heifer.  Here is a look at the list

• Penelope
• Moxie
• Survivor
• Valentina
• Orphan Annie
• Winney
• Baby
• Kansas
• Supper
• Grace
• Charlie
• Daisy
• Sassy
• Roxie
• Sally
• Lucy
• Bell
• Frisky
• Anuva
• Danni
• Gabriella
• Jana
• Karley
• Talia
• Lil Angel

You all are awesome and made this little 7 year old's day that you would help me name a calf!!  We have already had a bucket calf named Bell and she should calve in the next month.  Sassy was one of our dogs that we got from Dorema Farm, but those were about the only names that we had used before.  :)

Without further delay I introduce you to... Winnie!!

Thank you so much everyone!  He said she likes her name!  :)

-A Kansas Farm Mom