Kat Dancing

I'm up to my ears in calves and associated fluids, I'm getting about six hours of sleep a night, the whole family is living on pizza, and my modem blew up.

So I'm sorry for the lack of posts. (But not very.)

Bit of unexpected excitement today... at the risk of offering too much information, my family has something of a fundamental disagreement on the nature of cow afterbirth (of which there is an abundance this time of year) with our dogs. We think it's icky. Our dogs think it's extra-meaty treats.

Because of this, my father had thrown some afterbirth in our manure pit, expecting it to sink. It hadn't. I knew nothing of this until I went out around noon to tag and vaccinate a recent calf and happened to see our eldest dog, Shep, sitting by the manure pit and staring intently at something inside. The cows were also lined up at the gate, staring either at Shep or at the pit. Cows and dog had expressions of intense interest on their faces, which never bodes well, so I went to see what the fuss was about.

And saw my dog, Kid, with his head just barely sticking up above the level of water and shit in the pit.

As far as we can tell, Kid - who is immensely greedy - had been tempted by the sight of the afterbirth in the pit, and had either convinced himself that the layer of scum on top of the water was solid and could hold his weight or had simply leaned out a bit too far and fallen in. Either way he'd been there for some time and was about to go under for good when I found him. I managed to get hold of his ruff by leaning out over the pit as far as I dared, but I wasn't strong enough to haul him over the side, so I held him up with one hand and managed to retrieve and dial my cellphone with one hand, ringing my bro to come help me. I will never say nasty things about my cellphone again.

At any rate, we got him out alive - but a more wet, cold, miserable, and stinky dog I don't think I've ever seen. The water was freezing, of course, as well as filthy, and he was naturally panicked by his near-drowning. We washed him down in warm water, dried him off, and got him in front of the heater, and he's fine now - but it was close.
Jeez. I wonder what normal people do for their adrenaline rushes?

Note to self: build fence around manure pit. Also, find other means of disposing of afterbirth.

Today was something of a victory for me.

We officially started calving on Tuesday, which is part of why I haven't been posting so often: it's been insanely busy. The other part is that it's been very bleak and depressing. This hasn't been a good calving season for us at all: we had another abortion, and on Friday I was up all night with a heifer who would eventually be delivered of a sad, damp mass of dead calf, a mass that I would have to forcibly remove from her as she tried to lick it back to life. Then on Saturday my father went out to find one of our best cows stone dead. We've no idea what happened to her, but whatever it was, it was quick; there was no sign of struggle, and certainly there'd been no illness. She was not only a good cow but a particular pet of ours, a real favorite, adding to the misery of it all; and she was pregnant, so we lost another calf along with her.

So what with one thing and another I've ended up with three live calves out of seven calvings, and a dead cow to boot. I was getting pretty desperate for some live calves to take care of, to take my mind off things and to serve as a sign that our luck was turning. And when I went out to check the cows this afternoon it looked like I was going to get them. Two heifers, Flan and Ghost, were in light labor - nothing serious, yet, just wandering around with their tails in the air and a look of bewilderment on their faces. I went back in with my fingers crossed that everything would go fine. An hour and a half later my dad rung to say that they'd both broken their water and had feet, and I went flying out there, happy - because there's little that can go wrong at that stage; the calf's in the birth canal, and once you can see the feet you know whether or not it's a breach presentation (the most common bad presentation).

But there are still a few things that can go wrong.

Well, guess what.

Flan had hers no trouble - a big, beautiful, healthy little heifer calf - and she took to it instantly, and was being a good mother, something that's always a worry with the first-time calvers. But Ghost didn't progress at all. Nothing but feet. I wasn't overly concerned at first, because heifers often take longer than the more experienced cows, but as time went on I got more and more worried. I got up behind her and tried to pull the calf, with no success, and I put my hand up into the vagina as much as I dared and felt around, but couldn't feel a head.

I called my dad and explained. "Leave her alone for a bit," he said.

This was reasonable enough. I have a reputation - and a bad habit - of getting too anxious to "help" cows calve; I like getting involved. So I went back to the house, still worrying and restless and not at all happy, but trying to convince myself that I was just being paranoid. My parents were both trying to convince me of the same thing; I suspect they felt I was being just a little obsessive over the calf thing, as, okay, I probably am. By the time we went back to the field, I think all three of us were pretty well convinced that we were going to find Ghost happily licking off a calf that she'd been able to have once the nosy human stopped poking at her.

She wasn't. She was exactly as I left her; feet out to the knees, no head in sight.

We brought her in, headgated her, and washed her off enough that it was safe for me to go up in her. I put some sleeves on and went groping around. Trying to figure out what's going on inside a cow isn't easy at the best of times; when she's calving, it's a bit like sticking your arm in a sack and trying to figure out what's in there by feel alone, except that everything's very slippery and the sack is trying to squeeze your arm off. "Can you feel a head?" my dad asked.

"No." I groped some more. "I feel a neck."

This was seriously bad news - it meant that we had a head tuck, a relatively rare but unpleasant presentation. In a normal presentation, the nose comes out overtop of the feet, but in a head tuck, the head somehow gets caught on the cow's hipbone as it passes and turns. Once it's in the birth canal there's no room for the head to turn back, but at the same time the birth canal is not wide enough for the head and shoulders to come out together.

There are two ways to fix this. The second is to get a special piece of sharp wire, work it around the calf's neck, and cut the calf's head off.

I was, obviously, not thrilled about that one, so I started trying the first one, which is to push the calf back out of the birth canal into the body cavity, which will (theoretically) give you enough room to pop the calf's head back around and then pull it into the birth canal in a proper position. This is not all that easy to do. For one thing, Ghost was fighting me all the way. She is a good girl, and was being pretty tolerant about the whole human-with-hand-up-ass thing, but once I started pushing she'd had it. As far as she was concerned, she'd worked damned hard to get that calf as far out as it was, and now here I was pushing the blasted thing back in. She pushed back with all her strength, which was, needless to say, more strength than I had in my entire body.

For another thing, even when I'd managed to get the calf back into the body cavity, getting hold of its head and pulling it around was absolutely not happening. I couldn't tell, at any given moment, whether I had hold of the thing's ear or its tongue or its neck or had my finger in its bloody eye; everything was insanely slippery; the legs kept flailing around in my way; my arm was being squeezed by what felt like a rabid boa constrictor; and Ghost was still determinedly trying to get the calf back into the birth canal, and frequently succeeding. My father, in the meantime, was saying helpful things like, "Haven't you got it yet?" and "Push on the shoulder. If you were doing it right, the head would be popping right around." I'd have strangled him, except my hand was pretty well otherwise occupied.

Finally there was a sliding and a kind of "pop" sensation, and Ghost gave an almighty heave, and my arm and the calf's legs both came wizzing out the back end - but with the calf's nose peeping out overtop of them, this time. I got rid of my gloves and started pulling, and Ghost, valiant little girl that she was, started pushing with all her might, and within ten minutes the calf was lying on the ground, soaking wet - and shaking its head, and coughing; the damned thing was, for a miracle, alive.

So I'm happy. I have two new calves to take care of - we're trying to decide between naming Flan's little one Cookie and Tart, and Ghost's baby is getting named Spirit, and they're both healthy and strong and eating. Our bad luck has maybe been turned around, this time. And I was right, not paranoid, which is a bit of a boost; and I dealt with a head tuck all by myself, which I've never done before.

What's really odd, though, is that the first head tuck we ever had on the farm - and the first I ever had to deal with - was Ghost's grandmother Spooky as a first-calf heifer. Dad was gone for some reason or another, and it was just Mom and I, and I was about fifteen at the time, had never dealt with a head tuck before, and didn't know enough to realize that the cow had to be standing up or I'd never have enough room to pull the head round. I can remember lying on the ground with my hand in her to the shoulder, fighting against that same massive set of cow muscles fighting me and with the same slipperyness, but with not an ounce of room to do anything. The calf was alive when I started - I felt it moving - but by the time the vet got there, stood her up, and got the calf out, she was stone dead.

It somehow feels like by saving Spooky's great-granddaughter, I've absolved myself of that first failure.

But probably not. Dead is dead; there's nothing you can do about it, nothing that will fix it or make it better. About all you can do is let the memory fade.

But, still, it feels nice to have something alive around here.