It started to feel a bit like summer today. I could feel my arms burning when standing out of the shade. I received a timely call from a friend of mine, who is also a veterinarian, mid-day after finishing my barn calls and we were catching up and talking about just how unkind and less patient people seem to have become over the past year. For non-sick patients needing vaccines and annual bloodwork, it is taking 3-4 weeks to get an appointment right now with either of our doctors. That is frustrating for some people, but they are receiving reminders about services that are due 3 weeks prior to the due date. Everyone wants McDonald’s fast…Amazon Prime fast. That is just not how medical service works for routine care that is really not urgent. If we packed the schedule to make this happen, there would be no room for the sick calls and urgent labor/delivery issues that are all too common this time of the year, unless our staff wants to work 18 hour days. Not to mention keeping up with the mares that need insemination and are time-sensitive. “I’m not even sure why I signed up for this some days.” – I told him at one point. “I give myself a mental thrashing over the 1% of people who are unhappy and lose track of the 99% of good and helpful things we’re able to accomplish. I’m to the point that I just tell people that I want them to be happy with their animal’s care and if they need to develop a relationship with another veterinarian to do that, I am happy to transfer records.” I cannot exhaust myself over the 1%. We finished our conversation as I pulled back into the clinic to see the afternoon haul-in appointments.
As I was wrapping up, I got a message that a gentleman had a cow that was down and laying around. She could get up if encouraged, but was limping and preferred to lay down. With the heat, I felt it best to run back out to see her before she laid around and got herself dehydrated. The owner met me at the gate, opened it and waved us to drive on in next to where she was laying. I approached her and learned that she had been doing this for several days. I put a rope on her neck and pulled a loop under her chin and over nose to fashion a halter. She stood up, but was clearly in a lot of pain. I placed a hand on her thigh and walked with her. You could feel and hear bone grinding with each step. She arched her back as she stepped. The owner is a man in his mid 60s who has acreage, makes hays, plants watermelons and pumpkins each year and keeps cows because he loves tending to them and they keep the pasture mowed, not so much for beef or production. “I just like her, she’s not the prettiest thing, I probably shouldn’t have kept her so long, but she’s always been such a good momma. I was hoping something was just in her foot.”
His options were to try to take her to butcher, do a trial of some anti-inflammatories to see, or euthanize her. “I don’t think she’ll load on a trailer, or walk into the slaughterhouse”, he said. He paused, stared at her now laying back down chewing her cud, bit his lower lip, and said, “I guess we’re going to have to put her to sleep.”
There a few ways we can euthanize cattle. There’s always gunshot to the head, a captive bolt that penetrates the skull, anesthesia followed by potassium chloride to stop the heart, or anesthesia followed by a lidocaine injection into cerebral spinal fluid. I initially grabbed the captive bolt, thinking that would be cheapest and most practical and was getting some medication to sedate her a bit beforehand. The owner was chatting to me as I drew up medication and told me, “I just can’t shoot them, it breaks my heart. I know a lot of farmers do it that way, but I just can’t.” His voice broke and his eyes filled with tears. I got the point right away, and grabbed a 140mL syringe and pulled up some euthanasia solution – the same way we put most small animals and horses to sleep.
I walked behind the cow and gave a small dose of sedation in her tail vein where she was laying. She became very relaxed with slower breathing and I moved to her head. I placed the needle in her jugular vein in her neck, she didn’t flinch, and pushed 100mLs. She took a deep breath, her eyes fixed, and she laid over on her side. No struggle, no movement, just a peaceful transition that we always hope to achieve. The owner was on the other side of the truck, tears now rolling down his face, head down, hands on his forehead, sobbing. I stayed kneeling there with the cow to give him some time, hoping he didn’t feel rushed or that I could see him.
We had a moment to chat as we wrote the bill for the visit. I thanked him for the way he cared for his animals and made tough decisions when they needed to be made. I told him I completely understand the joy that comes with feeding and checking on animals every day, tending to their fence lines, rolling out hay, dumping some feed, and seeing new calves in the spring. He’s done this all before, he fully understands farming and the loss that comes with it. He’s taken plenty of cows to slaughter that were grown for that purpose. He didn’t need to hear anything about death. I just wanted him to not feel embarrassed in the least and hear that I understand his emotion and get that these are more than just cows.
I so wish mass media could see these good and decent people. There are so many more of these folks than the videos of the few idiots out there abusing production animals. The majority pour their hearts into it and live it every day. I had a little lump in my throat on the drive back to the office thinking about it all and the conversation I had just hours earlier with my colleague. This is why I do the job – this is the majority – this is not the 1% of ungrateful, inconsiderate, unpractical. There is ebb and flow in everything. It is okay that we might think we hate our jobs for a few minutes some days. As sad as I felt for him, he lifted me up out of my own self-pity so that I could peak around the trees and weeds to see the forest again.
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