To catch up on cow # 595 you may want to read my blog from January 29. We left her freshly IVed and standing at the bunk eating.
Well, things change. The next day our herdsman who just returned from a few days off determined she had a LDA – Left Displaced Abomasum. Time for Bovine Biology 101. I will not torture with all the fine details that Farmer would use to educate you. If you want those details, call him. Here goes, in a nutshell.
Cows have four stomachs. The last stomach in the line is called the abomasum. The first stomach is called the rumen. The rumen is the stomach where the regurgitation takes place. I will use Farmer’s explanation of this. Picture a big cement truck with the big cylinder on the back that turns and mixes the cement. As long as things are turning and churning she will be as content as a cow chewing her cud. Actually, she will be a content cow chewing her cud. When the abomasum gets displaced it is because the rumen quits working and gas builds up in the abomasum. When the gas builds up it causes the stomach to “float” up. So now, we not only have a cow not ruminating we also have a stomach going on vacation, heading north. If you do not take care of this the cow would die.
The first step after discovering the wandering stomach was to toggle it down. The cow is given a shot of Rompun under her tail right where it connects to her body. I guess it’s like the amnesia drug we get for surgeries. She isn’t totally out but she could not give a pooh about what you do. Now, here comes the urban legend part of this. We tip her. Yep, tip her over and she ends up lying on her back. I asked Farmer if her legs were straight in the air and he said they folded them down. In my mind I’m thinking she would be so embarrassed!
Occasionally, this isn’t enough. This time the LDA had been undetected long enough that when the stomach was up north on vacation it decided it wanted to make a vacation home and started to attach with scar tissue. The only way to take care of that is to do what we did today.
The cow had local injections to numb it. Wait fifteen minutes, shave the spot, align your tools and get ready. Our herdsman is also a vet which is one of our biggest blessings. He has done 300 of these he figures. He had to reach in and carefully pull the abomasum away from where it was attaching. This next part was tricky. He then snagged the abomasum with the needle and went straight down, being careful to miss the main artery and milk vein. The suture was pushed through her belly and left hanging out. He repeated it again from the inside about an inch away. He then tied the two strings together on the outside of her belly and proceeded to stitch her up. 
He had to cut through twelve different layers going in, but only had to sew it back up in three layers, the peritoneum, the muscles and the skin. He also doused it with penicillin. I told him it looked like she had a football sewn into her side when he was done. He just smiled and I could tell he was thinking, yep she’s a crazy.
