My BEB - relaxed with Rompen
On my way home from shopping yesterday Farmer called me and asked where I was. "I need you to stop at the vet and pick up some sutures and curved needles for our herdsman/vet. We have to do a C-section" he explained.
I snagged the supplies, stopped at home and piled on the clothes. "This, I have to document. It will be some good reading" I thought. After layering on the clothes I was as big as the Michelin Tire man. I waddled out the door with camera and notepad in hand.
So, why did this cow have to have a C-section and how did the herdsman/vet figure it out? She was showing signs of labor, but things weren't progressing. When he did a physical exam he discovered that the uterus was twisted which was closing off her cervix. How does that happen you might ask? Well, I did ask. This is a possible explanation. In our new free stall barns (where the cows have individual cushioned beds to lay on) the slope is designed for the front end of the cow to be higher than the back end when they lay down. That is the way God created them to lie when out in the pasture. Somehow, somewhere she may have found a place to lay with her head lower than her body. Or, she may have shifted a certain way while lying in the free stall which could have possibly caused this. Bottom line, we really don't know.
So, how in the world do you untwist a uterus in a critter that weighs about 1200 pounds? About three hours before I arrived, this is how they did it, sorry no pictures. The herdsman/vet (which I will refer to from now on as H/V) gave her some Rompen in her vein. Rompen is like a twilight drug. It puts her to sleep, but not totally. The depth of her "sleep" depends on how much she is given. Well, she got quite a bit for this exercise. After about 30 seconds she laid down. Once she was down, five guys rolled her completely over and then she was checked. Still twisted. Then she was rolled back the opposite way, two complete turns. Then checked again and things were untwisted.
Finally, the uterus was where it should be. She was left for a while to see how things would progress.
After time, the H/V did another physical check and the cervix was not dilating properly. A calf needs about 12 inches to pass through and she only had three inches. He then decided the uterus may have been twisted for some time and possibly there was scar tissue not allowing the cervix to dilate enough and the calf could not be born. In fact at that point he was able to test the viability of the calf by pinching its tongue. There was no response, so he was pretty sure the calf had died.
On to the surgery. We started at 4:53 PM by putting her in the head gate to contain her.
The H/V then took a surgical blade and shaved all the hair where the incision would be for a cleaner surgical area.
More washing and then he administered lidocaine. He injected it several times in between the vertebrae to block the nerves. He did a second row. Then he injected all along the shaved area where he would make the incision.
We waited 15 minutes for the numbing to take place. He then gave her a very small amount of Rompen intravenously under her tail - to calm her down. We didn't want her to have too much or she would have fallen down. Just enough to comfort her a little more.
With one of the guys holding her tail up - which prevents her from kicking, the first incision was made. As he came to a couple places where the nerves were, she kicked so hard and fast that the scalpel went flying out of his hand hit me in the arm and fell on the ground. Thank you Jesus it hit where there were layers of clothes, otherwise I might be sporting some stiches of my own.
The V/H had to cut through several layers to get to the uterus and move the stomach out of the way. Once he got to the uterus he had to turn it around and find the proper place to cut. He was looking for one of the horns where the calf was partially abiding. He made a 15 inch cut in the uterus.
We attached chains to the front legs of the calf, one of our guys climbed up on top of the gate above the cow carefully pulling the chains. Farmer and the H/V carefully pulled the 90 pound calf out. She was a big calf, and did not survive. There were no deformities, so the H/V believes she died because she should have been born a day earlier but couldn't because of the problems.
Once the calf was out, the H/V had to pull out the placenta. In a cow there are these weird globby looking things that connect to each other. One set is on the uterus (caruncles) and the other set (cotyledons) is on the placenta. The caruncles interlock with the cotyledons on the fetal placenta to provide a passageway between the cow and fetus for transfer of nutrients and waste products.
When the placenta was removed he squirted in penicillin and quickly started sewing up the uterus. It was shrinking fast.
His hands were shoved in the small place and it was painful watching him stitch over and over. He used 2 sutures that were 54 inches long. After he sewed the uterus, he held it under the fluids in the cow's body to check for bubbles. He saw a few and did another round of sutures - another 54 inches. He injected more penicillin.
After that was done, onto closing her up. The first layer was the peritoneum. This layer surrounds all the organs. He then injected and covered that area with penicillin.
The next layer to be sewn was muscles and fat. He squirted more penicillin over that closed area just before closing her skin. He did this to make sure there was no hair in that area - the hair would hinder the healing.
Finally, the skin layer was sewn. I told him his stiches looked like a "blanket stitch" I used on Rylen's Christmas stocking.
He washed her and dried off the area of the incision. He finished her off with a nice metallic spray. She looked like she had dental braces on her side.
Farmer and the H/V inserted a tube down into her stomach and pumped in a solution of warm water, electrolytes and yeast to help replenish her quickly.
The final thing we did was to place red ankle bracelets on her. The red bracelets identify that she has been treated with antibiotics. She will be kept separate from the regular cows and put in the sick/treated pen. These cows do not get milked in the main parlor but will be milked in a separate parlor and the milk is dumped. They are totally separate from the herd.
It was 7:38 PM when I walked out.
Now, I've had 4 C-sections and it took less than an hour for each one. The doctors were in a nice warm operating room and could take my uterus out and sew it up - no reaching inside and trying to sew it up in a confined area. Comparing the two, I think our H/V is one talented guy.
