JF Ranch
Well-known member
I had some excitement yesterday. Many of my friends & neighbors give up on checking the last of their heavy cows late in the calving season, but it is my belief that the last calf born is as important as the first. We are down to the last 2% of our cows yet to calve and continue to watch them as we go about other pressing ranch work.
It was a beautiful warm spring day and I was on my way home with the mail just before noon, when I noticed a 2 year old heifer calving with the calf out past the shoulders. No problem, except that it looked like the calf was still enveloped in it's placenta, so I decided to try to open it with my pocket knife. The heifer stood up and the calf hung from it's hips and I was only able to make a small opening near the calf's head.
Normally this is adequate and I wasn't the least bit worried, but decided I'd wait the few minutes required for the calf to drop. Normally when they drop like that the calf lands with it's head bent underneith it's body and I wanted to make sure he was OK. While waiting, I thought I saw the calf lift it's head once, which made me think he might be alive and well.
It only took a minute for the the calf to drop and sure enough it's head was doubled back underneith with the membrane still covering the nose. I was there in about 2 seconds to remove it and straighten out the head.
This calf did not look good. It had a blank look to it's eye and when I poked a stem of hay in it's nostril to produce a sneeze to initiate some breathing , it was like sticking it into a chunk of swiss cheese. This calf was as unresponsive as any dead calf can get. I always check for a heartbeat by placing my flat hand on the rib cage and sure enough there was a strong one.
So, I did what we occasionally need to do. I started mouth to mouth resusitation. By blowing into the calf's mouth I filled the diaphram like a balloon. I pushed the air out and repeated the process. It wasn't working. I tried an old technique that seldom works, which is to swing the calf in a circle by his hind legs. The idea being that the centrifugal force should drain fluid out of the lungs and when you let him go, the "smack" on the ground is to "wake" him up sort of like when a doctor spanks a newborn baby.
It did not work. I went back to the mouth to mouth. Nothing. I swung him again. Still nothing, but there was still a rapid heartbeat. The eye remained blank and death like. Another stem up the nose produced absolutely nothing.
It appeared that this calf would not survive and I was tempted to give up. I don't give up easy however, and with the heart still beating, I continued my resusitation efforts. By this time my new hired hand, who was waiting for me at the barn, had walked the 100 yards or so to see what I was doing. I doubt that he had ever seen such a thing before. Again, thinking the effort was futile, I nearly gave up hope, but the heart continued to beat. So I continued to try. This nice Momma was doing a great job, licking the rear end while I was working on the other. Occasionally she'd sniff my hat, wondering what I was doing to her baby!
We estimated that perhaps 15 to 20 minutes passed before I saw the nose slightly twitch. Then again. Still the eye looked bad and the stem produced nothing.
Finally I was dumbfounded when there came a feeble attempt to inhale and moments later another, then another, until he was breathing very weakly on his own with fluid filled lungs. He tried to blink his eye and eventually the stem produced the desired response and the steady breathing became stronger and clearer. Amazed that this "dead" calf had come back to life, I was concerned that he might have brain damage and not be a useful calf.
We propped the legs under him and he was holding his head up slightly when I decided to leave him for a while to see what happened. After 15 or 20 minutes he was still doing OK, so I went home to eat dinner (some folks call it lunch, but in these parts the noon meal is called dinner). Later we took Momma & baby to the barn, milked her and fed him. He layed there until evening when we returned from moving a bunch of cows off hay to green grass. We fed him again and he wanted to stand up.
By this morning he was walking around, although not yet interested in nursing. This evening after putting him up to his stantioned mother, he successfully nursed a little on his own. It was at this point that we noticed "he" was in actually a heifer!
This little miracle is amazing to me. The jury is still out as far as whether this calf will be fully normal, but I have a strong feeling she will be. I feel somewhat heroic in a weird sort of way, but consider it all in a day's work. I wonder if any of our urban contemporaries realize the lengths each of us go in our animal husbandry? Instead, I'm afraid they accept the propaganda that we abuse our animals. I hope I'm wrong.
It was a beautiful warm spring day and I was on my way home with the mail just before noon, when I noticed a 2 year old heifer calving with the calf out past the shoulders. No problem, except that it looked like the calf was still enveloped in it's placenta, so I decided to try to open it with my pocket knife. The heifer stood up and the calf hung from it's hips and I was only able to make a small opening near the calf's head.
Normally this is adequate and I wasn't the least bit worried, but decided I'd wait the few minutes required for the calf to drop. Normally when they drop like that the calf lands with it's head bent underneith it's body and I wanted to make sure he was OK. While waiting, I thought I saw the calf lift it's head once, which made me think he might be alive and well.
It only took a minute for the the calf to drop and sure enough it's head was doubled back underneith with the membrane still covering the nose. I was there in about 2 seconds to remove it and straighten out the head.
This calf did not look good. It had a blank look to it's eye and when I poked a stem of hay in it's nostril to produce a sneeze to initiate some breathing , it was like sticking it into a chunk of swiss cheese. This calf was as unresponsive as any dead calf can get. I always check for a heartbeat by placing my flat hand on the rib cage and sure enough there was a strong one.
So, I did what we occasionally need to do. I started mouth to mouth resusitation. By blowing into the calf's mouth I filled the diaphram like a balloon. I pushed the air out and repeated the process. It wasn't working. I tried an old technique that seldom works, which is to swing the calf in a circle by his hind legs. The idea being that the centrifugal force should drain fluid out of the lungs and when you let him go, the "smack" on the ground is to "wake" him up sort of like when a doctor spanks a newborn baby.
It did not work. I went back to the mouth to mouth. Nothing. I swung him again. Still nothing, but there was still a rapid heartbeat. The eye remained blank and death like. Another stem up the nose produced absolutely nothing.
It appeared that this calf would not survive and I was tempted to give up. I don't give up easy however, and with the heart still beating, I continued my resusitation efforts. By this time my new hired hand, who was waiting for me at the barn, had walked the 100 yards or so to see what I was doing. I doubt that he had ever seen such a thing before. Again, thinking the effort was futile, I nearly gave up hope, but the heart continued to beat. So I continued to try. This nice Momma was doing a great job, licking the rear end while I was working on the other. Occasionally she'd sniff my hat, wondering what I was doing to her baby!
We estimated that perhaps 15 to 20 minutes passed before I saw the nose slightly twitch. Then again. Still the eye looked bad and the stem produced nothing.
Finally I was dumbfounded when there came a feeble attempt to inhale and moments later another, then another, until he was breathing very weakly on his own with fluid filled lungs. He tried to blink his eye and eventually the stem produced the desired response and the steady breathing became stronger and clearer. Amazed that this "dead" calf had come back to life, I was concerned that he might have brain damage and not be a useful calf.
We propped the legs under him and he was holding his head up slightly when I decided to leave him for a while to see what happened. After 15 or 20 minutes he was still doing OK, so I went home to eat dinner (some folks call it lunch, but in these parts the noon meal is called dinner). Later we took Momma & baby to the barn, milked her and fed him. He layed there until evening when we returned from moving a bunch of cows off hay to green grass. We fed him again and he wanted to stand up.
By this morning he was walking around, although not yet interested in nursing. This evening after putting him up to his stantioned mother, he successfully nursed a little on his own. It was at this point that we noticed "he" was in actually a heifer!
This little miracle is amazing to me. The jury is still out as far as whether this calf will be fully normal, but I have a strong feeling she will be. I feel somewhat heroic in a weird sort of way, but consider it all in a day's work. I wonder if any of our urban contemporaries realize the lengths each of us go in our animal husbandry? Instead, I'm afraid they accept the propaganda that we abuse our animals. I hope I'm wrong.
