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If you’d told me on Monday last that the vet would be out twice by Thursday evening, I think I would’ve needed a strong drink immediately.
The problems started late on Tuesday, which marked the sending of 2016’s first “I can’t make training, I’ve a sick calf” text.
A six-day-old bull calf was stretched out, writhing with discomfort. At the time, I thought he was a goner – he looked in terrible pain.
Calf development
The vet was convinced that the calf had developmental problems, but we treated it as, and prayed for, colic.
While we had him, we queried the vet about a prolapsing cow. She had done it last year and was accidentally put in-calf again.
A prolapse close to due-date is not a monumental catastrophe, and hadn’t been in 2015. But the problem had started much earlier this year and such was her condition that a stitching-up job in January had lasted all of three weeks. To add insult to injury, she wasn’t due until late March.
Early births
The vet decided to induce her, with a view to carrying out a caesarean section later in the week. Our unborn also required a steroid to rapidly develop its lungs. In a natural pregnancy, these are the last organs to reach full functionality. But his departure was to be an unnaturally early one.
“That’s not the calf we...??”
As we scrubbed up for our pre-empted C-section on Thursday, the vet’s face was a picture of pleasant shock. Our goner calf from Tuesday was bounding around the pen behind us like a gazelle.
“Not a bother on him, that’s one down anyway...” I replied, as thoughts turned to the task at hand.
The procedure went swimmingly.
Cow cut. Calf out. Calf okay. Cow stitched. Cow milked. Calf tubed. Pair penned.
At time of writing, mother isn’t knocking down barriers to care for her new bundle of joy.
I have just seasoned the calf with salt and barley to encourage a lick.
The next worry is whether or not she’ll be able to pass her afterbirth naturally, though the vet is optimistic.
Ah, the joys of suckling.
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