All Creatures Great and Small (and Medium Sized, too!)

I always have loved the James Herriot book, "All Creatures Great and Small."  I highly recommend it.  It is one of those books that you must read again and again.  James Herriot was a Yorkshire country veterinarian from the 1930's.  His book is funny, interesting, and inciteful.  One of the stories I recall is from Chapter 36 in which Herriot goes to work on the dairy cow of a poor farmer.  The cow has mastitis and is very sick.  Her fever is high and it is clear that things look bleak.  Herriot compassionately tells the farmer that he doesn't think the poor cow is going to make it and that maybe he should put her down so that she doesn't suffer any more.

The farmer told Dr. Herriot that the cow was the most valuable thing he had left and he was not ready to give up on her yet. He told Dr. Herriot to come back in the morning.  The farmer got a bench and sat down and commenced to milking, massaging the swollen, hard infected udder, and stripping the black, clumpy infection out of the cow.  When Dr. Herriot arrived in the morning, he found the farmer had stayed up all night to save his cow.  The farmer was exhausted, but the cow was feeling better and survived!

I tell you that because yesterday afternoon I went to the barn to milk Luna and found this!:

As seen above her two quarters on the left side were super swollen, sensitive and hard as a rock.  This was so bizarre as I had milked her out the day before and all was fine.  Mastitis is serious and things can "go south" quickly.  Here is a front shot of the udder.  If you would touch it, it was hard and tight.  When you touched it, she would kick.  She was not happy and neither were we!  In fact, she wasn't eating her dairy ration.  That is very strange for her.

We took her rectal temperature with a thermometer and found it to be 101.4.  That is fine for a cow.  So perhaps we caught this early.  By this time it was approaching 8 o'clock, so we came in and checked the fridge where we have antibiotics.  All of them were expired except for one.  The one medicine that wasn't expired is not labeled for use in dairy animals.  We had some injections that you inject directly up into the teat, but they were all expired, too.  Not good.

"I'm hot blooded, check it and see..."

We decided to roll the dice.  We'd do what James Herriot's poor farmer did and massage and milk the infection out.  Starting at 9 pm and continuing at 10 and 11, we went out to the barn hourly, milking her out.  We also heated up water and made hot compresses to put on the udder.  We didn't stay up ALL night long, but at 5 am, Tricia was out at the barn again and all through the morning, massaging...

Rubbing and milking...  An odd, opaque liquid came out that wasn't milk.  By the morning, though, the swelling was coming down and she was starting to pick at her food.  Tricia continued to work with her throughout the day, giving her molasses and then let her out of the barn to eat grass.

By the evening, the swelling was done considerably.  Still no fever.  Her appetite wasn't back to normal, but she was eating.  She was still super-sensitive on the front quarter.  After repeated massaging and stripping, we were successful in getting streams of infected material to begin emptying.

Eliminating this nastiness, like the farmer in Herriot's book, will make Luna feel better and save her.

While she is still not 'out of the woods yet, she is making great strides.  We've contacted our veterinarian and will use penicillin if she takes a turn for the worse, but for now, the regimen described in Herriot's book is working!  Speaking of working, I'm headed back out to the barn now to check on Luna and see if I can get some more infection out of her front quarter.