I think I will have to start from the beginning, sorry this may take some time, but please do bear with?
Yesterday we had a heifer who was showing signs of calving, however after a short time we noticed there was nothing happening, so we had the vet out to see if all was ok. She wasn't properly dilated so the vet dilated her, whilst the animal was in the crush, and saw that it wasn't presented properly. The calf wasn't presented properly, it had it's head back, although feet were there. After a little bit of time trying to correct the head, the heifer went down in the crush, so we had to halter her and move her to the milking parlour, to finish the process of calving her there, as there is way more space (don't worry we had finished milking and cleaning, I went over it and doubly disinfected the whole area and everything, just in case). We managed with the help of the 2 lads to get the calf into a good position inside its mother, the vet then winched it out and we helped too. Afterwards she examined the mother to make sure that nothing had torn/ripped, all ok there. She then sewed up her backend, just enough so she could give birth to the placenta, but also enough to stop her from prolapsing, as we had a few which did that (all these being ones bought in, only 2 so far....). The vet then gave her a shot of AB's whilst we tended to the calf, a lovely heifer I might add. After that we put the heifer into a lovely clean building with plenty of bedding and hay and water, we took calf away as she was too stressed to be interested in her. I got calf onto the bottle and she suckled very well, although her mouth was cut alittle from when we pulled her from her mother, she is fine now though and is healing very well. Well all seemed to be just fine today and then this morning after mum and dad had to gone to Birmingham on business, and during milking, we noticed she had prolapsed through the stitches her whole womb and backside, all of it. We got her into the crush and called out the vet, Tsaphan my elder brother cut the stitches carefully to prevent further injury, she was bleeding you see. Well the vet came out and she went down again in the crush, so we had to move her to another part of the building, the vet tried for a time to put it back inside and stitch her up, but to no avail, so she called another vet to help her. They managed to get it back into her and stitch her up, all the time the 2 lads were holding her upright and Tsaphan nearly fainted with the pain of holding her up for a long period, in a sitting position she was. End of the matter is the vets were here all morning sorting her out, she haemorraged and went into shock, they had to get her out of shock and got her blood pressure under control. Anyway the vets stitched her up and they have left her in a sitting position, they said if she does it again or starts to we have to call them out, although I think they atre coming up again soon anyway to check on her, if she does it again they will have to have her PTS. They said she has a case of ringwomb, so we won't be breeding from the little heifer calf. Although we could sell the little heifer calf as a pet to a smallholder/farmer, but whoever buys her will be warned not to breed from her, as for the mother if she heals well, we will be fattening her up for the slaughter.... Really nervous now! just hope all stays well. Sorry for the monologue, but I had to let it out somewhere.... Thanks for listening!
All the best and I really hope no one has to go through what we have just been through.
WBF
Topic: Another disaster calving! ::) (Read 8210 times)
