Bayberry and the Post-operative Patient

This has been a real tough week, what with wondering if we will have a place to ship milk, talking about what we will do if we lose our market and all. Then yesterday we had to have major surgery done on one of my favorite cows, Frieland LF Zinnia. She belongs to Alan, and is actually a grown up show calf, but she stands in the string that I milk and she and I have an understanding. She is one of those cows that is no trouble at all to milk; she just stands there straight in her stall, is clean and doesn't kick, so even though her milk production is just average I am fond of her.

Unfortunately for her, she stands between two big old snake necks, who when she isn't feeling the greatest, steal her feed. Fresh cows (newly calved) seem to need lots of fiber, which they get best from dry hay. Zinny just had a calf a couple of weeks ago and I guess Char and Willow were eating most of her hay. Anyhow, she went off feed a couple of days ago, and our favorite vet diagnosed a twisted abomasum. That is one compartment of the bovine four-part stomach and when it twists no food can pass through. The result is one very sick animal until an operation untwists everything and the stomach is sewed in place where it is supposed to be. Most cows begin to eat within a few hours of their operation. Zinnia didn't. She looked real sorry for herself last night and didn't seem to eat at all, although she would lick salt, which was somewhat encouraging.

I dreaded going to the barn this morning. I didn't want to find her dead or beyond recovery. However, as I walked past the heifer yard, Alan's other show heifer, Bayberry, came over to the fence and I noticed that she is developing a nice little udder. This was cause for some real serious rejoicing as I had pretty much given up on ever getting her pregnant. She has been serviced AI a couple times and run with the bull off and on (off to go to the fair) since June. She looked like she was bagging up in the fall and then just stopped. I was really afraid we would have to sell her. I ran back to the house to give Alan the good news.

However, all through milking when I stopped every little while to watch Zinnia, she didn't look promising. She just lay there disinterested in everything, including her feed.

I seem to have to do that, stare at the sick cows, watching their every move, trying to figure out how sick they are, what with, and what I can do to help them. It is a real compulsion and I will go look at them every couple of minutes when I am in the barn. When we can't get them right it bothers me intensely. When they do come around it is a huge relief, not to have that urgent need to take care of them and get them better.

The most movement Zinny made was to lick desultorily at her salt once or twice. I felt pretty awful and envisioned the ugly task of dragging a valuable and much liked animal up on the hill to be composed. Then, just as we were finishing the last couple cows, she hopped up on her feet and began to gobble her straw bedding. We gave her some of our old hay and she began to sort the best pieces out of that too. Funny, we buy real pricy, high nutrient hay for the cows, but if they are the least bit out of sorts they much prefer our stemmy old grass hay. I came over for breakfast in a better frame of mind than the past few days, I'll tell you. The good news about Bay, and seeing Zinny back to eating just made my day.