Monday mornings and Friday afternoons are typically chaotic in a veterinary practice. On top of scheduled appointments, Monday morning is a time for adding appointments for the issues that owners have sat on all weekend and that are now urgent. Friday afternoon is a mad dash to get things seen before the weekend, or just typical irritating cases that the universe will throw at you to keep you late on a Friday, or to give you something to wonder about all weekend long.
I had four back to back visits at the office from 2-5 today, then an add-on emergency goat that couldn’t stand, a 40 minute drive from the clinic. En route to the goat, the pager rang – a donkey with a retained placenta. I hang up from discussing it with the owner, and another page for a goat that had just given birth and an owner unsure if there is another kid. I dealt with the down goat and an add-on pelvic ultrasound for another goat while I’m there for a doe that I’ll probably have to see for a c-section in the next few days. I hopped back in the truck and called the donkey guy back – rejoice, the placenta passed. Megan asked if I could pick up takeout Thai on my way home and I was able to make it happen! I made it home, put down the fork from Thai and the emergency pager rings. It was a heifer in labor that was not making any progress, only 15 minutes from the clinic. Praise.
I arrive at dusk and find a heifer and bull in a pasture on the side of steep hill. The owner is holding a bucket of sweet feed at the very bottom of the hill, trying to entice the heifer to move up the mountain in the direction of the barn. It looked hopeless. The heifer walks off and the bull runs bucking alongside her, stopping to sniff the two calf hooves and membranes protruding under her tail. I shake my head thinking that it’s just another typical cow call in Western NC. No facility, no headgate. I’ll be responsible for catching the cow and treating her.
I step to the back of the truck and pull up a sedative in a pole syringe and ask the owner to stay at the truck while I walk out to pasture so that the cows aren’t spooked by so many people. I make a wide circle around the two of them, the bull locking eyes with me as I come around them. The heifer moved closer to the bull. Just as she walks behind his rump, his body blocked her head from seeing me, and I stepped in with the pole syringe to land a stick in her left thigh. She jumped, ran, and the bull darted after her. I walked back to the truck.
The cow moseyed toward the far edge of the pasture, half way up the slope. I drove the truck out to her. She was laying in a pine thicket with about 16 feet of distance between her rear end and the electric fence. She sat breathing heavy, humming with each breath, saliva running from her mouth as they tend to do with the common sedative we use. She was upright on her chest, a pine tree blocking her from rolling down hill, with another pine uphill. I snugged a lariat around her head, flipped a loop over her nose to make a halter, and tied her to the uphill tree.
To the every day citizen, bulls have a reputation of being unpredictable. I would say most of my clients say that their bulls are “as gentle as a dog”. Even if I’ve been around them before, any bull in the pasture with a cow in labor is an unpredictable animal. They have a protective instinct that I’ve witnessed over and over. The gentle dog suddenly can change – snorting, rubbing his face on the ground, bellowing, and pawing the ground. I warn every owner about this when they force me to rodeo with their cow in labor out in the field with a bull.
The bull stayed close, watching from just outside the wood line. As I put my sleeves on and lubed up my hand, I stepped around the back of the cow, and she stood up abruptly, her head still tied to the tree. She stood still as I slipped a chain over each of the calves legs, a loop above the fetlock joint and a half-hitch below it. I put some pressure on the chains and got some leg movement from the calf. It’s a wonderful feeling to see that there is some potential for delivering a life calf! As I put traction on the calf’s legs, the cow plopped to the ground. I leaned back to pull, watching the crown of the calves headed it slowly delivered from her vulva. I lean further for more force and ZAP! I hit the electric fence! I swore under my breath, clinching my jaw – I grew up going to church with this man. The cow laid over on her side, her tail facing uphill, so I slid uphill, watching the fence, and delivered the calf’s head. With more traction, the shoulders delivered, I gave it a twist to prevent the hips from locking in the birth canal and in one swift motion, the entire calf was delivered.
I rip off my shoulder sleeves, get the calf upright, and reached into my pocket for the reversal drugs for the sedative I gave the cow. The sedative passes into the baby’s bloodstream, so I fished out a syringe from my pocket and gave the calf a dose of the reversal in its jugular vein. It immediately became more active, breathing deeper, and shaking its head. I put a twig up the calves nose to make it sneeze and clear it’s respiratory tract.
The cow stood, trying to run away in her sedated drunkenness, but my rope held her to the tree. I untied the rope and cinched it up tighter to bring her closer to the tree. I pulled up a dose of reversal, put on another glove to check her to make sure she didn’t have another calf inside of her or any tears. I put the reversal in a vein under her tail, stepped around to the tree and freed her from the rope.
The heifer walked away from the calf with no interest in cleaning or claiming it. The bull continued to buck and snort and act goofy. I gathered my bucket, chains, and dirty sleeves and walked back down the hill to my truck. I wanted to give them some distance to see if the heifer would go back to her calf, halfway up the hill, just at the tree line. She had no interest. I walked back up the hill, a headlamp strapped to my forehead, and dragged the calf down to a flat area at the bottom of the hill. It was strong and was willing to suck my fingers.
The owner has raised calves before and had a bottle. He agreed to come back and check on the calf in 1 hour to see if the heifer had claimed it. I fished out a bag of dried colostrum from the truck and gave it to him to mix up a bottle if needed. The owner climbed in the front seat of my truck and I drove him back up to the house to get his wallet. On the drive up In the truck, he told me “Justin, I think you’ve found your calling. Now I don’t know if they call it a bedside manner, but you’ve got it and I appreciate it.” I thanked him and made some awkward comment about just trying to be safe, and minimize stress and excitement.
I headed home in the dark, thinking about his comment, that he thinks that I’ve “found my calling”. I wonder what exactly makes him think he’s seeing someone who has found their calling? I suppose this job may seem impressive to some people – the drugs, ropes, tricks, danger, and then the sweetness of a new life at the end of it all. It becomes routine when you do it day in and day out. There are many veterinarians out there that do what I do, and many that do it far better. The truth is that I’ve learned everything I know from some great teachers, through studying, and through my own failures and successes in practicing. The knowledge was passed on to me. I suppose it is how one assimilates all of the knowledge and how one communicates it to people and applies it to the animals that creates uniqueness and leaves an impression on people. Maybe that’s what he’s eluding to, or maybe he was just being kind.
I honestly forget that I have a skillset that clients need some days – that I know something they don’t. I feel like a normal person most days – I work a lot, I have bills to pay, make poor diet and exercise decisions, wish I had more time to see more of the world, try to be respectful and mind, and I have a dream to build a farmhouse with my wife one day. I enjoying learning about all sorts of things and I think I just assume everyone else does too. I find myself showing people things or explaining what I’m doing, knowing full and well they shouldn’t be trying to do many of these things themselves. I’m a nerd. That is my style – what makes me unique. A blend of normal human and nerdiness. That must be what makes me appear to have found my calling.
A long weekend ahead. I’m on call until 5pm Monday. Take care!
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