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My husband and I are poor losers.
We hate to lose an animal and often go to extreme measures to
save the sick or injured ones—getting up several times in the
night to give intensive case around the clock, if needed, or
trying innovative things to solve a problem or keep a cow or
calf alive. We’ve washed the dirt out of calves’ stomachs with
water (putting water in via a nasogastric tube and letting the
dirt-laden water drain back out the tube), given castor oil to
stimulate shut down guts to start working again, taped a
broken-off lower jaw back together on a newborn calf and fed him
for 2 weeks through the nostril (nasogastric tube) while his
mouth was taped shut, until the bones healed.
On several occasions during the past
40 years, my husband Lynn and I have managed to save a
“hopeless” case by feeding the cow or calf via nasogastric
tube—sometimes for several weeks—while the animal was unable to
eat. You can keep the animal going with IVs or fluids by stomach
tube, and can give a calf milk/milk replacer via tube, but with
adult cattle you have to get “real food” into them. After a day
or two, they need more nutrition than you can supply with fluids
alone, and it’s not easy to get enough “food” into a large
animal like a cow, via stomach tube.
George
Our first experience trying to save a large animal that would
not eat was a calf called George, in 1971. He was a weaning age
steer (about 500 pounds), that I found “down” and weak from
coccidiosis, while riding range that fall to round up our
cattle. His rectum had been prolapsed for several days and was
dry, dirty and flyblown, and he was very weak from diarrhea
and loss of blood. He didn’t belong to us (he’d apparently
drifted down the creek and through the fence onto our range), so
when I got home I called the rancher who owned him and told him
about the calf and where he was.
I didn’t think much more about it
until I was riding in that area several days later looking for a
few more missing cows and saw the calf again. I was surprised
the rancher hadn’t come to get him, and even more surprised to
find the calf still alive, since he’d been sick at least 8 days.
By now he was too weak to get up and travel and had not been
able to eat or drink. It was a hot day and the calf lay gasping
for breath in the shade of a sagebrush. The only thing that kept
him alive was his will to live.
When I got home I called his owner
again, and the man told me he didn’t have time to mess with the
calf and that if we wanted to try to save him, he’d split with
us. So—hating to see any animal suffer and die, my husband and I
(and a couple friends) drove to that range pasture, pulled the
calf up a steep bank with ropes, and loaded him into the back of
our jeep. We hauled him to the vet clinic (the only vet in town,
at that time). The vet was gone on vacation to England, but his
receptionist helped us give the calf IV fluids. We cleaned up
his dry, prolapsed rectum and put it back in (and stitched it),
and gave him injections of medication. Then we took him home and
put him in a little shed for shade and shelter and fed him more
fluids, electrolytes and protein via stomach tube.
The next morning he was able to
stand up, but this improvement was temporary; he went down again
and was unable to get up for more than 3 weeks. We treated him
continually with antibiotics and gave him injections of
vitamins. Since he would not eat, we kept him alive by feeding
him 3 times a day via nasogastric tube through the nostril
(since esophageal feeder probes had not yet been invented, and
would not have worked for a calf this big). We fed him a mix of
water, milk, milk replacer, electrolytes, sugar, scour medicine
(since he still had diarrhea from coccidiosis)—about a gallon
and a half of “food” at each feeding. A cousin from California
had given us a big jar of powdered artichoke leaves the year
before (which we didn’t
know what to do with) and we mixed some of that into the fluid,
since artichokes are supposedly high in vitamin B.
Eventually George became strong
enough to get up. His gut was healing—and he started nibbling
hay again. He had lost his cud, so we gave him cud-starter in
his daily round of liquid food. His rectum healed and we took
out the stitches. It’s amazing how much Mother Nature can do, if
given a bit of time and half a chance. George was finally eating
and drinking
again, and he survived. He’d been a tremendous challenge, but
one advantage was the fact he was still just a big calf, and
could get enough nutrients from milk/milk replacer; you can keep
a calf going on a liquid diet.
Linda’s ‘Lasses
A bigger challenge is feeding an adult cow. Our first try at
that job was Linda - a cow who quit eating and drinking due to
“wooden tongue” (actinobacillosis). This is an infection in the
tissues of mouth and tongue caused by a gram negative bacteria.
The firm swelling created by the inflammation and resultant
abscesses make it difficult for the animal to chew or
swallow. The base of the tongue is very swollen and hard. Our
cows were on fall/winter pasture in December 1974 when Linda
(pregnant with her 9th calf) developed wooden tongue; our ranch
has a lot of dry grazing and we keep the cows on these mountain
pastures after selling their calves—until the feed snows under
or it’s time to bring them down for calving. We calved in
January for 35 years, so we’d usually bring them down off the
mountains in December, unless we had to bring them down sooner
if the snow got too deep for grazing. We had some snow that year
but were trying to keep the cattle up on pasture a little longer
by supplementing them with a few bales of hay.
The first day we started feeding hay
we noticed Linda had lost weight and she wasn’t eating; she’d
nibble at the hay but didn’t actually chew and eat it. So I came
home and got my horse, and brought Linda down to the corrals. We
put her in the chute and discovered her problem—and treated her
with antibiotics daily for a week. Sodium iodide given IV is
very effective against wooden tongue, but can also cause a
pregnant cow to abort—so we gave her a broad spectrum antibiotic
(dihydrostreptomycin) instead. She had lost so much weight we
feared for the health of her unborn calf, but when we asked our
vet about that he said the calf would probably be fine; a
pregnant cow tends to sacrifice her own body to supply
nutrients to the fetus.
Since she would not eat or drink, we put her into the chute
twice a day and fed her by stomach tube—several gallons of water
and everything we could think of to mix in that might give her
some energy and nutrients. We added cream of wheat and other dry
“mush” products (the granules were small enough to go down the
stomach tube if we kept them stirred around in the water so they
wouldn’t plug the tube), and lots of molasses. After a few days’
treatment and feeding her by tube (and swabbing her throat and
the back of her tongue with iodine on the 8th day), her tongue
became less swollen and she was able to start
eating and drinking again.
She was extremely thin when she gave birth to her calf a couple
weeks later (and was so weak she could barely get up again after
her labor), but soon she started to gain the weight back. Even
though she didn’t have much milk at first, she soon got back to
normal. Her calf seemed ok, and we named him ‘Lasses. She was
able raise him, and by fall he fit into the herd average of
calves to sell. Linda’s ‘Lasses survived, partly because we were
able to keep his mama going with fluids and molasses and mush
during the time she could not eat.
Cow Cow
One of our biggest challenges was a young cow born in 1979. Her
real name was Sylvena. But after her close scrape with death and
the large claims she made on our time and our hearts she became
affectionately known as “Cow Cow”. That fall (1981), when we
brought our cows home from the range to vaccinate them and wean
their calves, we kept them in a small pasture by the corrals for
a couple days til they quit bawling, then took them to our upper
pastures for fall grazing. But when we gathered them out of the
pasture to take back to the mountains, we missed Sylvena (a 2
year old cow that had just weaned off her first calf). We didn’t
know she was very ill (with emphysema—due to the change of feed
from dry range grass to green pasture) and hiding deep in the
brush along the creek. We had no idea she was there until 2
nights later when our daughter saw the cow staggering out of the
bushes. We slowly herded
her down to the corral; she was trembling and wobbly, with high
pulse and temperature, and labored breathing. We treated her
with antihistamine, epinephrine and antibiotics. The stress and
lung damage from the emphysema put her at serious risk for
pneumonia. It started to rain, so we gently herded her into a
nearby shed and hoped she would make it through the night.
During the night we gave her more antihistamine and epinephrine
(to combat the allergic reaction in her lungs and help keep her
from going into shock) and a drug to help her breathe more
easily. Thus began round-the-clock efforts to save her, and
countless injections of medication. Her temperature was 106 and
she
would not eat or drink. We gave her 3 gallons of water via
stomach tube, several times a day, with some electrolytes and
dextose added. After the second day we realized we had to get
more nutrients into her or we’d lose her from sheer starvation.
So we added molasses, powdered protein and milk (from our milk
cow). We’d never heard of anyone feeding milk to
a 2 year old cow, but we figured it might give her a little
energy and nutrition. We were desperate.
After the first several times of
putting the tube down her nose, she didn’t struggle or protest;
she seemed to know that the stuff we were pouring into her was
dinner. For several days I added some uncooked cream of wheat to
the mix. Then we thought of the pig pellets. We’d bought some
calf pellets earlier that summer and in the batch was one sack
of pig starter,
by mistake--and we hadn’t used it. This was a high protein grain
pellet, and probably contained a lot of nutrition. So I soaked
some of the pig pellets in warm water to soften them up, then
ran them through our kitchen blender until the particles were
very fine. If we swished this slurry around enough as we added
it to the gallons of water we poured down the nose tube, they
were carried along with the water and didn’t plug the tube
We treated Cow Cow for pneumonia for
a long time. Since she was not improving on the antibiotics we
were using, we had our vet come out and take a lung tap and
culture the fluid sample--and he then checked to see which
antibiotics might work better against this particular pathogen.
Of the dozen he used, there was only one antibiotic that could
fight it. So we switched to that one, even though it was
terribly expensive. After weeks of treatment, her temperature
finally came back down toward normal and she began to take an
interest in food again—and was able to get up. She began to chew
her cud again, and the day she kicked at me when I gave her a
shot, I knew she was going to make it. We tubed her with “pig
pellet soup” for the last time, 34 days after the ordeal began.
By then it was November, and very
cold. She was a walking skeleton, with no winter hair coat. We
let her out of the barn on warm afternoons, gradually increasing
her time outside until she was acclimated. She was so happy to
be out of the barn, that first day, that she tried to give a
little jump/buck, and nearly fell down because she was so weak.
But her progress was steady after that, and when the vet came
out to preg check the next fall he couldn’t believe she was the
same cow (and pregnant!). Indeed, the only way she could pay for
all that time, effort and medication was to stay in the herd and
have lots of calves—and she did.
An Unusual Calving
Our latest adventure in cow cuisine was this past winter when
one of our son’s cows went into labor in December, 2 months
early. The 3 year old cow didn’t come to the hay that morning
and was kicking at her belly and straining, but also very full
and not passing manure. Michael and Carolyn (our son and his
wife) brought her up to our corral, put her in the chute and
checked her. There was no manure in her rectum (she had a
blockage or shut-down gut), and her uterus felt like a huge
balloon pushing into her pelvis, though her cervix was not
dilating. We gave her a gallon of mineral oil and 3 cups of
castor oil (to try to stimulate the gut to move again) and
several gallons of warm water, via stomach tube. We left her in
the corral, where she paced around all day, kicking at her
belly, still not passing manure.
I checked on her after dark and she
was still miserable, and bloating. I called Michael and Carolyn
(who live a couple miles up the creek from us) and they came,
prepared to stick her. But about the time they arrived, she
passed some gas and foul-smelling loose manure, relieving some
of the pressure. The oil had finally worked things through. But
she was still
straining and kicking, so the next day Michael had a vet come
out and check her. Just before the vet arrived, the cow passed
some fluid; her cervix was starting to open. The vet gave her
dexamethasone and said that later in the day we could probably
help her expel the fetus.
During the afternoon she passed gallons of fluid; we suspected
she had hydroallantois—too much fluid around the calf—even
though the vet didn’t mention anything about this. When Michael
checked her that evening, the cervix had not dilated any more
than it had been that afternoon; he could only get 2 fingers
through it. Failure of the cervix to dilate, and inability
to expel the calf, is a common problem with this condition.
Since the uterus is stretched like a balloon (from all the extra
fluid) and can’t contract properly, and the fetus is not pushing
against the cervix to stimulate it to open, the cervix does not
open enough to allow the calf to come through. There’s no way
the cow can have the calf by herself.
So we gave the cow oxytocin to try
to speed up labor, and Michael gently worked at the cervix
trying to stretch it more, so he could get his hand through it.
She passed gallons and gallons of fluid as he worked at it. We
thought the fetus should be small, since it was 2 months
premature. Calving in April last spring as a heifer, this second
calver couldn’t be due any earlier than mid- February (which was
what the vet estimated when he preg checked her in September).
We worked 4 hours delivering that fetus, using lots of
lubricant, and finally resorting to a head snare to get the head
pulled through the tight cervix. Once the head was out, the calf
came—with lots of traction. It was a huge, abnormal monstor,
with about 14
inches of rubbery neck between head and shoulders; its neck and
body resembled a seal. The calf was nearly 5 feet long! By the
time we got the calf out, the cow had gone down in the chute and
we feared she might not be able to get up. But she did; she
walked out of the chute and went to the far corner of the corral
to lie down, so we left her alone. By then, it was
nearly midnight. I went out and looked at her with a flashlight
at 5 a.m. and she was flat out—unconscious and barely breathing.
She probably went into shock soon after we pulled the calf (a
common sequel to this rare condition, losing so much fluid all
at once). So we gave her
dexamethasone, and injected some dextrose under her skin, and
she started to come out of shock. We gave her 5 gallons of fluid
by IV and another 5 gallons of warm water and electrolytes via
stomach tube. Her gut was working again; she’d passed a lot of
manure. But she could not get up, and we covered her with saddle
pads to try to keep her warm. The next day we gave her another
IV, and more fluid by stomach tube, and since her gut seemed to
be working, we added some mushed up alfalfa pellets to the water
we gave her by tube. She was stronger, able to sit up, and we
covered her with a heavy tarp to help keep her warm.
Weather had turned cold, with snow
and wind, so we made a windbreak of bales stacked on one
another, and put another tarp across the top, between the bales
and the fence, to create a “tent” over her. A few days later she
still could not get up so we moved her into the barn with our
tractor and loader. We put a big piece of plywood on the hay
tines and rolled her onto the plywood—and strapped her on for
the trip to the barn. Once in the barn, we could use a hip hoist
(and lash cinch from a pack saddle for a sling on her front end)
to lift her up and get her on her feet. All in all, we fed her
by stomach tube for 3 weeks, twice a day.
The “recipe” for each meal was 7
gallons of warm water (hauled out to the barn in 2 big insulated
coolers, since weather was very cold) and several cups of
alfalfa pellets pre-soaked in water. As they soaked, they
expanded in bulk to create about
2.5 gallons of loose “mush”. At first we also added molasses or
Karo syrup to the mix, to give her more energy. It took a bit of
finess to get all this food down her without plugging the tube.
Michael poured the warm water and I poured the “alfalfa soup”
slurry into the funnel, mixing it as we poured, and creating a
swirling action that kept the alfalfa particles
moving. Otherwise they would pack together into a wad and plug
up the tube or the funnel. Lynn and Carolyn would hold the cow’s
head so she could not sling her head around and disrupt our
dinner delivery (she was not as “tame” as Cow Cow, who patiently
allowed us to feed her by tube). During the evening feeding, one
of our grandkids would hold a flashlight so we could see what we
were doing, since that barn had no lights.
Thus we coordinated the twice a day
ritual and team effort—a family project. I soaked the pellets
for several hours ahead of time so they were completely
rehydrated, warming the slurry on the wood stove to slightly
hotter than body temperature, then pouring it into 9 jars to put
into the insulated coolers. Lynn filled the 7 gallon jugs with
warm water and put them into coolers, then our kids came down
from their house and we packed all the stuff (and funnel and
tube) out to the barn to “feed” the cow.
Yes, you can keep a big critter
going with nutritients given by stomach tube, and in many
instances this can make the difference between saving or losing
the animal. We’ve become very proficient at “cooking for cows”! |
