Waitin' for the Vet

It's a long story, but poor Rosie needs some doctoring beyond what we can provide.

Update....A little backstory from Saturday. I wrote this then, but waited to post it until now, because I was afraid things were going to go way south on us.....so this is from last week: 

Sometimes you just know...one look at my lovely Rosy and I knew she wasn't right. I noticed yesterday that her udder was a bit overlarge for a heifer not due to calve until February and we had already planned to move her to a stall in the cow barn this morning, just so we could check things out. 

This morning she was clearly in labor and not progressing one bit. I hate to see an animal straining and nothing bulging outward in the back end. It can mean all kinds of stuff...all bad. Twisted uterus. Head back. Leg back. Both legs back. Tangled up twins. What it doesn't mean is anything good.

She was happy to go into an empty tie stall. We left her alone to settle for a while, then the boss palpated her. At first he thought she was okay. Second check revealed a leg back. I won't bore you or gross you out too much with the details, but the calf was a dead preemie. A dead calf is much harder for the cow to deliver than a live one and a tiny preemie is even worse.

I felt so bad for poor Rosie. In order to help her....and hopefully save her life...we had to hurt her. She didn't understand the needles or the efforts involved in getting the leg and head.,....which was twisted...aligned so her baby could be born. I am thankful that Alan and Liz do the whole team work thing so well. Without them it would have been a lot worse i fear.

When all was done, we had to move her to a stall on the other side of the barn because she kept crawling under the tie rail in the first stall.

Hopefully she will pull through all right and it would be a nice bonus if she comes into milk and gives us a lactation. It about broke my heart to watch Alan lead her around the barn on a halter. Even though she had just been through a terrible ordeal, she paraded like the show cow she is, head up and proud.

Back to the present....Rosie did great for a couple of days. She came into milk and ate like a champion. We put her on antibiotics, just in case. 

Then yesterday she went off feed. Our vet came in to see her today and diagnosed a uterine infection. She had a temp of 105!

Thus she received some anti-inflammatory medicine and will get a higher dosage of antibiotics for five days. Her milk will have to be diverted from the tank for quite a while for that reason, but it will be well worth it if she recovers all right.