Uggh! I have a stomach ache!!!

I was on call this weekend and was concerned with how much attention Nemo was getting and how much snow we were actually going to get. Luckily, this part of New York faired quite well and only 6-8” fell. That’s just a ‘dusting’ for these parts…  Overall it was a quiet weekend. I had 3 DA’s, and another lambing call. The lambing call came in at 11pm on Sunday night. Anyone who personally knows me, is well aware that my head hits the pillow at about 9-9:30. So, yes, the 11pm page woke me up. I was grumpy thinking that they woke me up to drive an hour one way to pull a lamb. The best way to get some of these out is with tiny hands, of which I do not have. But, if the ewe had to have a C-section, that’s kind of my territory…. 

The ewe had twins, the first of which was dead. The second was alive and a little boy! It really wasn’t that hard to get the lambs out, without a C-section, which makes it even more frustrating to be called out in the middle of the night.  But then you see these cute faces, and it make it a little easier…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The other calls I had were for three different cows with a displaced abomasum. This is probably the most common surgery we perform in the dairy world, and I realized I have yet to explain it to you! A displaced abomasum (DA) is commonly seen in cows that have just had a calf, or “freshened.”

Cows are like a finely tuned machine. They love routine and if there is anything that drastically messes with their routine, it causes them stress. They like the same group of cows, the same food, the same timing of going to the milking parlor and even the same people handling them. For various management reasons, some of these things need to be altered or changed throughout a cow’s lactation. Having a calf is one of those “stressful” events in a cow’s life. Yes, it’s part of nature, and yes, they calve every year, but even still, it’s quite an “event” to go through.

So what is a DA? It’s when the fourth compartment of the stomach, which normally sits on the bottom right portion of the abdominal cavity, fills with gas and floats either to the left side or the right side of the abdomen.   When the abomasum floats to the right, it has a higher potential to rotate on its own axis and cut off all blood circulation to the stomach.  This is a much more serious situation then when it flips to the left.  Of all the DA’s that can occur 80-90% of them are left DA’s.

There are several risk factors that pre-dispose cows to getting a DA. Anything from how fat/skinny they are, how much they eat before/after calving, how finely chopped the forage they eat is, to how much grain they get. Like I said, they are like finely tuned machines and when you mess with it, it can have a huge impact on them.  To try to prevent DAs from occurring, farmers really try to keep cows as comfortable and stable as they can from the 2 months before they calve (dry period) until they are well into their lactation and about a month after they’ve calved. 

So, on to fixing them…  DA surgeries can be performed on the left or right side of the cow, and can even be done with the cow upside-down on her back. There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach. I personally don’t know too many cows that voluntarily lay upside-down or know of any that enjoy being upside-down when forced, so I opt for the standing right-side approach. As with all surgeries we do, the cow is sedated and the area is clipped, surgically scrubbed and blocked with lidocaine. I then surgically scrub my own arms and put on sterile surgery gloves.  An incision is made in the side of the cow. When performing the surgery on the right side, I then have to reach around the inside of the cow, around all the intestines, over the rumen to the left side and deflate the abomasum, using a long tube. Once the abomasum is deflated, I then come back to the right side of the cow, reach down underneath the giant rumen and pull the abomasum back to the right side. I then find where the abomasum attaches to the small intestines and suture that connection to the wall of the abdomen. This is so the DA doesn’t return in a future lactation.  I then suture her abdomen close in three different layers and she’s good to go!

The whole surgery from start to finish takes me about 45 minutes.  We certainly try to be as clean and “sterile” as possible, but we do perform these surgeries in a barn, rather than in a sterile surgery suite, so we generally put the cow on antibiotics after the surgery.  Most of the time, these cows will start munching on hay or feed halfway through the surgery.  This is one of the “routine” surgeries we do, and cows recover quite well within a day or two.