Milk Fever + Monster Big Calf=

Almost no sleep for anyone.

Etrain started calving at the end of milking last night. Liz spent several hours in the barn waiting for something to happen....

She and Alan gave E a bottle of calcium sometime between ten and eleven. (I went out but by that time the clock was pretty blurry.)

Calf was upside down first time Liz palpated her. Cow thrashed around for a while and got it mostly straightened up. Ralph and Liz finally got the head and legs just right somewhere along towards midnight. Darned cow wouldn't lie down though, which is less than desirable for all concerned.

I suggested everyone adjourn to the house for a little while and turn off the lights so maybe she would lie down. Liz went out maybe fifteen minutes later and the old girl had managed to get herself in trouble. Liz let her out of her stall and pulled the calf...a monstrous bull that looks about six months old already.

Etrain wouldn't even try to get up and was trying to prolapse. Ralph sewed her up and we administered more calcium, oxytocin and an anti-inflammatory drug.

And we waited. She lay there alternately taking great interest in licking her calf and eating hay and drooping down into a frightening stupor. Still wouldn't even attempt to get up.

Around two-thirty they sent me to bed so I could get up and take care of her this AM while they slept in a little.

I didn't figure she was ever going to get up. She looked pretty forlorn, down on calcium and exhausted from trying to have that beast of a calf (which by the way was up and trotting around the barn begging lunch off anybody who was willing about ten minutes after it was born.)

As soon as I got up this morning I dragged myself into my barn clothes and shuffled on over to the barn for maybe the twentieth time in 24 hours. The boss's flashlight, which I stole again, made the new-fallen snow sparkle like diamonds. I didn't care and thought so out loud. E is one of my very, very favorite cows. If you search this blog you will find many pictures of her and stories about her. She is a real pet, which is not the best way in the world to manage cows if you want to hang on to your heart all in one piece. It is an unwritten law known to anyone who keeps livestock that it is never the bad ones that something happens to.

I didn't know what would be waiting for me, but I sure didn't expect what I found. I have no idea how she got where she is, because I don't want to wake anybody up to ask...however, she is lying on the grates over the stable cleaner, yards and yards away from her stall.
Chewing her cud.
She had to have walked there somehow, as her butt is facing down a narrow aisle where there is no possible way anyone could have put her.

At least she isn't dead. And I really, really hope she can walk by herself. Otherwise milking and cleaning stables is going to be real interesting, as stepping over a thirteen-hundred-pound cow filling the entire walkway to overflowing is going to be a bit of a challenge.

Wish me luck...I am expecting another long day.

*****Update: Thanks for all your kind thoughts. Although E is by no means out of the woods yet, Liz reached down a few minutes ago to see if her back end was warm (cold fresh cows are cows likely to be suffering from milk fever) and she jumped to her feet and moseyed away. She needed another bottle of calcium early this morning, so we may have more episodes, but my dear big girl is back in her stall, eating like crazy and mooing and cooing over her gigantic baby boy... I am delighted. I suppose it is a fool's errand to get so attached to a cow, but I sure hope she makes it.