Healthcare for Rosie

We've been watching Rosie pretty closely.  She gave birth to a calf prematurely last Saturday morning.  The calf was dead, unfortunately.  Rosie did not progress in her delivery and the placenta did not break off.  After a few days, we called our veterinarian and he made a farm call.  He told us to give Rosie six days and then call him back if it hadn't released.  At that time he would consider giving her a hormone injection to put her back into labor to continue delivering the placenta and then follow that up with a regimen of antibiotic injections to ward off infection.  He asked us if we were milking her and we said yes.  He told us that that was a good thing since the milking would simulate a calf nursing and stimulate things to move along as far as the placenta was concerned.

Well, 6 days came and went.  When we called the vet back, he was out of town.  The mess hanging from her backside was beginning to smell and I was very concerned about infection as she was discharging.  Tricia left a message with his answering service.  On the positive side, she was really starting to pick up, acting more alert and eating more.   She was really pretty much back to normal, whereas, on Saturday, she had us pretty concerned.  But now, her milk production that was originally lackluster has been gaining in volume with each passing day.



An unsightly mess...


The veterinarian called us back and we updated him on the situation.  He has cows and said this happens from time to time.  He told us that for his cows, he watches them closely and only gives them antibiotics if they need it, but he had to advise us to go ahead and start her on a subcutaneous injection of 8 cc's per day of penicillin.  He said that if you aren't careful, they can get a systemic infection and can go down quickly.  He was at his office a mile down the road and had mixed up the syringes for me, so I ran down to his office and picked them up.  I talked to him for a bit.  He told me that the old-timers say that you need to go in there and remove the placenta.  The danger with doing that, he said, is that the placenta is connected to the uterus with little "buttons" and if you forcibly remove it, you can scar the uterus.  He said if all possible just to let nature take it's course.  I like that non-invasive approach.

The boys and I had just watched an old Clint Eastwood western, Fist full of Dollars.  I didn't have a fist full of dollars, but I came home with a fist full of syringes.


Fist full of ... syringes.

I don't enjoy giving or getting injections.  I wanted to ensure that I was putting them in the right place.  YouTube is a great place to learn how to do most anything.  I searched, "How to give a subcutaneous injection on cattle" and several videos popped up that show you exactly how you do it.  YouTube is an incredible thing!  There is no end to what you can learn how to do on that website.

The more we started thinking about it, though, we didn't want to load Rosie up with antibiotics if we didn't need to.  One of the reasons we have milk cows is for the health reasons of drinking raw milk.  Antibiotics would kill the good bacteria as well as the bad and we'd have to give her pro-biotics to build back up the good bacteria in her.  So we decided just to watch her really closely and give the injections only if we absolutely needed to.

Well great news today.  This morning we went out to milk and Rosie had gotten rid of the rest of the placenta - at last.  I found it by the water trough.  Not pretty to look at.  We decided that the first order of business after church was to give Rosie a bath.  She really stunk as you might imagine.  So I stretched out the hose by the barn, got some soap and a stiff brush and gave her a good scrubbing.  She's still wet in the picture below and not very happy with me, but she's clean and smelling a whole lot better.

That's a neat trick putting your tongue in your nose, Rosie.  Very lady-like


This photo shows how her bag is in "full bloom" (full of milk).  If we can keep her healthy, she ought to be in good form for the livestock shows in January.  These are Russ' last shows, so we want him to have the best possible chance to succeed.  Poor Rosie lost her calf, but as it looks now, she's going to be healthy and in milk - thank the Good Lord!


Would someone please milk me?