by Amanda Owen
Native breeds tend to have easy calvings and shouldn’t need too much help, but Clive wasn’t taking any chances. This cow was precious, and the signs were that she was carrying a big calf. She hadn’t lost her appetite, and it was simple enough to tempt her to the feed trough and slip a halter over her head. You’re not safe in a confined space with a sizeable animal like that charging around, and a cow in labour is not going to be the most reasonable creature (any more than a woman is). We wrapped the rope around a solid metal post, and I held the end while Clive checked to see whether the calf was correctly presented: two front feet and a nose in a diving position.
‘It’s coming reet, but it’s got a fair old pair o’ feet on it, she’ll struggle to calve it herself,’ he said.
Next he attached a long length of the thicker baler twine that you get on the Hesston size straw bales, tying an end to each of the calf’s front legs just above the hooves. We have in the past used a calving aid, a ratchet-type contraption that can be used to help a delivery; but although this is a useful tool in the right hands, it can also cause great damage to the cow and calf. So for us it’s back to the old favourites: baler twine and muscle power. Gentle and constant pressure on the twine at a downward angle helps to ease things along, but the danger can be that the cow will go down at this point – which is why she must not have her halter too tightly secured or her head trapped in any way, as this could impede her breathing or even strangle her.
Zabrina decided to lie down, and I loosened my hold on the rope, quickly tying it to the post but leaving plenty of slack. Then I went round to the business end, where Clive was now sitting on the straw with the string taut around his back. The hooves and nose were out; Zabrina was straining and emitting some pretty harrowing bellows. Suddenly the calf’s head appeared, wet and steaming in the early-morning air. Now it was time to pull with all our might, a matter of urgency to try and keep the calf moving, the shoulders and hind quarters being the most likely sticking places. The calf began to come away, and soon the forequarters were out. Clive was sweating, but all was going well.
‘Nearly there,’ he panted.
The long length of the calf’s body was now laid out behind the cow on the straw.
‘Keep pullin’, come on, Mand, it’s not movin’, he’s fast at his hooks.’
Sometimes a calf’s hips stick within its mother’s pelvis, bone to bone, and pulling gets you nowhere. It’s a very bad thing to have a calf stuck at this point, and it’s surprising how quickly the life drains out of them. We changed positions, me now pulling the calf’s legs while Clive attempted to slightly rotate him – not easy, as he was a big calf, heavy and slippery. Clive managed a slight twist, and that was all it took: with one final push, Zabrina’s calf was born. He lay outstretched and motionless on the straw. Clive slapped his chest with the flat of his hand. I squeezed his nose and muzzle to remove the mucus and pushed a blade of straw up his nostril to make him sneeze, but there was no reaction.
Clive rummaged in his kitle’s top pocket, and among the scraps of paper, pennies and fluffy mints he found a vial of Dop drops (Dopram V). This medicine, a respiratory stimulant, is an absolute lifesaver. A few drops under the tongue of a newborn struggling to live will cause a sharp intake of breath. It only works in those first crucial moments after birth, and thankfully Clive had it on him. Prising the newborn’s mouth open he tipped in the whole contents of the bottle: an overdose by any standards, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We both watched, holding our breath, willing the calf to cough. Thankfully, within seconds the Dop drops took effect. He gasped, and then blinked.
Carefully I untied the twine from the calf’s legs whilst Clive removed Zabrina’s halter. Zabrina seemed to have gone into a trance. Sitting on her haunches, she seemed none the worse for her experience, but she had not investigated what had caused her such pain. She seemed to be in denial, and we decided that the sooner we departed and left her to her new role as a mother, the better. We carefully pulled the calf around to her front so that she could not ignore his presence. By the time we were at the barn door the calf had lifted his head, and Zabrina was looking a little more interested in him. She soon came to her senses and when we went back to check on progress, both were standing. It would have been tremendous to have had a heifer calf to breed from, but we knew we were lucky just to have a live calf. We occasionally need to call in a vet. Where possible we take the patient to the vet’s at Kirkby Stephen, but with the cows and horses, the vet has to come to us. A few years ago now, when we kept more continental cattle, one of our cows gave birth to a bull calf. The cow had calved easily enough, but shortly after the birth we noted that the calf’s front hooves were knuckled over. Although it’s not a common condition, I had seen it before: we once had a foal born with the same problem, but not quite so severe, and only on one of its hooves. The foal was quite mobile, and eventually over time it corrected itself without any intervention.
But for this calf it was more serious. The cow was very attentive to her newborn, and after licking him vigorously she nudged him to encourage him to stand – but his front legs would not straighten enough to allow him to get to his feet. He tried, but his knees buckled, and he collapsed into a heap with his legs splayed. His desperation to stand, and his mother’s helplessness and distress at being unable to feed him, were pitiful to see. All we could do was milk her and then decant the warm colostrum into a feeding bottle. As I sat in the straw alongside the calf, his neck stretched out across my legs and head tipped back sucking the bottle, I wondered what, if anything, could be done.
‘I’ll ring t’veterinary,’ said Clive. ‘See what ’e thinks.’
He talked at length with our vet, describing the calf’s deformity.
‘I’ll consult with a colleague as to what’s the best course of action,’ the vet said. ‘I’ll ring you back shortly.’
Clive put the kettle on while we waited.
‘In all mi days, I’ve nivver seen one as badly affected as this ’un,’ he said as he brewed the tea. ‘I just don’t know whether them legs will ever straighten.’
‘Poor l’al beggar,’ I said sadly, finding solace in the biscuit tin. ‘I ’ate it when summat like this ’appens.’
We hadn’t finished our tea when the phone rang. The vet, having consulted a colleague, felt that surgery was the correct course of action, and we were referred to a specialist equine veterinary practice that had experience of dealing with severe neonatal bilateral flexor tendon contracture in foals.
‘It’s a simple enough procedure,’ our vet assured us.
Later that day we took the calf to the surgery, where we were expected. We were to wait while the operation took place, and then bring our calf back home with us once the anaesthetic wore off.
The cow was naturally not keen to part with her baby, venting her displeasure by bellowing loudly as we whisked the calf away and laid him out in the back of the pickup.
‘We’ll ’ave ’im back to yer in a crack,’ I shouted to her, and I had no reason to think otherwise.
It was a fair trek out for us, and we were relieved when we finally saw the sign for the equine clinic. Relief soon turned to unease, though, as we drove past signs for the hydrotherapy pool and the solarium, and past the rotary walker and exercise area. This place was seriously fancy, more like a spa hotel than the bog-standard veterinary surgery we were used to. Eventually we found our way to reception, where we were greeted by a jodhpur-clad receptionist.
‘Ahh, now you must be Mr and Mrs Owen. You’ve brought us a calf, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘If you’d like to take a seat, Bruce will be with you in a moment.’
We sat down, Clive peering into a highly illuminated fish tank whilst I flicked through the magazines: Equestrian Life, Horse & Hound and suchlike.
‘It’s all a bit posh ’ere, in’t it?’ I whispered to Clive.
‘I bet this is gonna be expensive,’ muttered Clive – rather too loudly, I thought, as the receptionist eye
d us up from the other side of her desk, her gaze coming to rest on our wellies, complete with clarts of mud stuck to their thick soles.
We didn’t have long to wait before Bruce put in an appearance, and he was everything that I would have imagined a horse vet to be. Cutting rather a dash in a tweed blazer, moleskin trousers and dealer boots, he was a far cry from the vets with rubber-coated aprons and waterproof leggings who we usually dealt with. After the introductions, it was down to business.
‘And where is the patient?’ he asked.
We traipsed across the car park and showed him the calf lying on a bed of straw in the pickup.
‘This is one of the most severe cases I’ve ever seen,’ he said, scratching his head. ‘But I think I can sort it out.’
We carried the calf to the back of the clinic and into the large animal operating theatre, lying him on the heavily padded floor whilst Bruce scrubbed up. No scrubbing brush and bucket of cold water here: it was all very clinical. I stroked the calf’s head, holding him still while Bruce snipped away a small patch of hair on his neck where he could raise a vein. Then he filled a syringe from a bottle, glancing at the calf; holding the syringe aloft, he flicked it with his finger to disperse any air bubbles.
‘I’m going to have to ask you to stand aside now,’ he said to me as he administered the anaesthetic. ‘I like things to be kept sterile.’
He looked towards me and raised his eyebrows. I stepped back to stand next to Clive, who was shuffling uncomfortably. The calf was soon asleep.
‘We’re going to be watching a master at work,’ I whispered to Clive as Bruce assembled all his equipment. There was a stainless-steel trolley with all manner of medical accoutrements arrayed neatly on top.
After covering the calf’s prostrate body with a green sheet and wiping its front legs with an iodine-based antiseptic, he switched on his head torch and reached for a scalpel. He talked us through the whole procedure, telling us how he was going to make a succession of small incisions along the length of the tendons, hopefully allowing them to stretch enough to be able to straighten the joint. Then he would splint the legs, bandaging them tightly in a straight position, and for a while the calf would need assistance to stand. Within a few weeks the tendons would heal, the bandages would come off and we would have an upright and mobile calf.
It sounded relatively simple and Bruce set to work, on his knees, hunched over the calf. There was no blood, not much to see at all. Every so often there’d be a metallic clank as the vet put the scalpel on the metal trolley and reached for the surgical scissors. There was a bit of manoeuvring of the patient when work commenced on the second leg, but eventually the suturing began.
‘I need your assistance now,’ Bruce said, looking towards me. ‘I’d like you to hold his leg straight while I bandage.’
He padded out the plastic splint with cotton wool, and then rolled out reams of vetwrap. Switching off his head torch, he got to his feet and momentarily stood admiring his handiwork.
‘That’s it,’ he said, reaching for the green sheet that covered the calf. ‘Now all we have to do is wake him up.’
As Bruce lifted the sheet the expression on his face changed in an instant. He dropped to his knees, hurriedly putting his stethoscope on the calf’s chest, moved it a little, then looked up to Clive and me and said, ‘Erm . . . I’m afraid he’s dead.’
Clive and I stood open-mouthed as Bruce took off his head torch and went to wash his hands. Lying in front of us was a perfectly healthy-looking calf, with straight legs. But dead.
‘There’ll be no charge for this,’ shouted Bruce, drying his hands. ‘I’ll give you a lift with him back into your motor.’
We were so shocked that we never got to the bottom of what had happened. It was only really Clive’s words of wisdom on the way home that helped numb the pain.
‘Mand, ’e just wasn’t a reet ’un. Yer know, there could ’ave been far more wrong with ’im than met the eye. We’ll get ’is mother another ’un, foster one on.’
Fortunately, bad experiences are few and far between. Sad times are part of the fabric of our lives, and in any day our emotions can veer from pure elation to despair, but it’s important to make the best of a situation and learn from it. We gave the cow another calf and, darling that she was, she accepted it without too much trouble. But that was the last time we ventured away from our usual veterinary surgery.
Clive once bought a batch of six calves quite cheaply, owing to one of them having a noticeably large umbilical hernia. They lived together in the barn on a diet of powdered formula milk and dried feed. Time went on, and they all thrived: long-legged and shiny-coated, they’d buck and race around the pen. Only the one with the hernia was quieter, standing to one side while the fun and games took place. We spent many evenings just leaning over the cattle feeder barrier, watching them larking about. Not only was it a pleasure to see them, it was also a good time to make decisions: should we up their feed, should we start weaning them from milk and introduce some hay? That is what stockmanship involves – observing your animals. It takes time and experience to become a good stockman, and it starts with looking.
‘I wonder if that ’ernia is botherin’ ’im?’ Clive said.
‘What – strangulating summat?’ I said.
Climbing over the barrier, we cornered the calf, who, having seen us coming, forgot his listlessness and became a whole lot more agile. We both felt the tennis-ball-sized lump underneath. There didn’t seem to be anything really worrying; it wasn’t festering. But unsurprisingly, the calf didn’t seem happy about us poking it.
‘It’s definitely uncomfortable,’ I said, stating the obvious.
‘I think that we should talk to t’vet,’ said Clive. ‘I’ll mention it when I’m next at Kirkby.’
The following Wednesday we loaded the calf into the little trailer and headed for the surgery, our vet having told Clive he had devised his very own non-surgical (almost) method for dealing with umbilical hernias. I must admit to being slightly on edge after our previous calf operation, but it was obvious that something needed to be done. The hernia was not going to go away by itself.
When we got to the vet’s I sent Edith into the small trailer to get him out – easier than getting down on my hands and knees and clambering in there myself. She pushed from behind and our calf emerged, looking startled. Before he had time to escape across the car park I deftly slipped a halter over his head, and with me pulling and Edith pushing the reluctant patient arrived in the garage that adjoins the surgery, which was to be our operating theatre. Within seconds of us arriving the vet had administered the anaesthetic. The calf rocked a little, then sank to his knees, and with one almighty push we rolled him onto his side. Our trusty vet produced a long steel rod and a large set of wire cutters: so much for state-of-the-art surgery. It looked as if he was going to be doing a bit of DIY.
Edith sat down on an upturned bucket, her elbows on her knees, watching closely with her face resting in her hands. Sidney and Violet crouched down to get a better view, hoping there would be a gory story to recount to their brothers and sisters. I held the halter, intrigued to see what was going to be done, half expecting that there’d be viscera or giblets spilling out when he made an incision into the taut skin that covered the bulging hernia. The vet had by now cut the steel rod into two short pieces of equal length, and kneeling down, he took hold of the hernia and pushed it until it went back inside the calf. Nipping the loose skin together, he made four incisions, pushing one of the steel rods through two incisions at opposite corners and leaving a couple of inches protruding at each end. Then he did the same the other way, thus making a cross shape with the steel rods. He took a roll of cord from the floor beside him, and wound it round and round the crossed rods in a weaving pattern.
‘I din’t know that thoo were into macramé,’ I said, fascinated by what he was doing.
‘This,’ he said proudly, ‘is my own patented – well, actually, it’s not patented – method f
or repairing umbilical hernias. It’s simple really. The steel pins provide an anchor to cover the gap in the muscle wall; wrapping the cord around secures it and covers the area that the pins do not. The strangulated skin to which the blood supply has been cut off sloughs off and the hernia remains inside, due to the build-up of scar tissue that covers the hole.’
‘Is that it?’ I asked.
‘Aye, that’s it,’ he said, tying off the cord, anchoring it securely to the rods. ‘Give him a shot of penicillin to ward off infection, keep the wound clean and make sure his pen’s nicely bedded up.’
And with that he was gone, to attend to his next four-legged patient. By now the calf was stirring. We’d been told to keep him lying down for a short time to let the anaesthetic wear off, and to give him time to come to his senses before trying to get him to his feet. Edith stroked the calf’s neck gently and I held his head firmly to the floor, while Sidney and Violet scrutinized the vet’s handiwork, disappointed that the whole procedure had been quite tame and involved more in the way of knitting than disembowelment. We were soon homeward bound with our calf, and were delighted when a few days later he seemed to have brightened up and was getting more involved in the rumbustious activities of his counterparts. The rods, cord and dead skin dropped off as expected, and were last seen being carried off triumphantly in the jaws of Chalky the terrier.
The terriers, Chalky and Pippen, are usually to be found patrolling the yard, lazing in the sunshine or perhaps loitering around the picnic benches looking up at the walkers with sorrowful eyes, willing them to part with crisps or scones or indeed anything edible. Everything is on the menu where Chalky is concerned, and she’s been known to stick her head into a temporarily discarded rucksack and help herself to a sandwich, wrapping and all.
