Toxo and Karma

Where do I even start for this post????? These last two weeks have seemed a bit crazy. But, as I think back on any previous week, they all seem to be that way….  I worked a short week last week, as I took a mini-vacation to Georgia, to meet my newest nephew.  It was a whirlwind trip, too short, but oh so worth it! Before I left, I had to cram all my herd checks into the shortened week and as usual, pick up any sick cow calls for the day. 

One of the calls was for a herd of sheep. This is a new herd that was co-mingled from 3 different herds.  As previously mentioned, it is lambing season and about a third of the 40 ewes had already lambed.  This shepherd was having trouble because there were two first time ewes that each had lambed with twin, dead lambs.  The ewes were completely normal and didn’t seem to miss a beat. But finding dead lambs was a bit alarming to the owner.

If there were only one set of dead twins, it would not be as alarming, and we probably wouldn’t perform a bunch of diagnostics to figure out the cause of the dead twins. However, with two sets of dead lambs, and several other lambs since, that have been born alive but have soon thereafter died, we decided it was best to send samples in to the diagnostic lab.  A complete “abort panel” costs about $500 for just the testing alone, not to mention my time and costs associated with examining the ewes, the farm and preparing the samples.  Due to the significant cost, I spoke with a pathologist at the lab, and we decided to test for only the most probable causes.  The samples we must submit are blood from the ewe, a piece of placenta, and various samples from the dead lamb such as: heart, lung, liver, spleen, adrenal glands, kidneys, skin, stomach contents and blood.  



Toxoplama gondii

I’m still waiting on the histopathology report (microscopic evaluation of the tissues), to support the blood findings, but the blood from the ewe came back positive for toxoplasmosis. This is a disease that is commonly carried by cats. It is a protozoa that is found in the feces of cats and is zoonotic (transmissible from animals to humans).  Contamination of the sheep feed with cat feces is usually how the disease is spread.  Growing up we always had “barn cats” and loved playing with them.  It wasn’t until vet school that I understood why having barn cats really wasn’t the best idea from a disease transmission standpoint.  Most farms don’t have litter boxes for the cats; instead the cats usually use bedding, hay or even silage for their litter boxes. This is precisely how sheep can end up getting toxoplasmosis.  It is treatable, and this farm has begun treatments for the sheep as I continue to wait on the lab for a final report of their findings.

I felt like this week was also “Beat up Dr. Telgen week.”  I’m not sure I ever really believed in karma, but the more I work in this field, the more real it seems. 

The first day back from my mini-vacation, we had a meeting at 7am to discuss a new insurance policy that the clinic will be participating in, from there the day was shaping up to be a doozy.  I had 6 bulls that had to be examined to get ready to go to the bull stud.  Because so much of the dairy industry uses artificial insemination as a means to get cows pregnant, there is quite a demand for genetically superior bulls to contribute to the gene pool.  Based on DNA evaluation, bull studs will select the animals that they want from a particular farm. These bulls will then go to the bull stud at an early age, to finish being raised, and start the semen collection process.  Before they go, the herd veterinarian must do a “pre-screening” to make sure there are no contagious diseases on the animal, no heart murmurs, respiratory disease, lameness due to poor conformation, abnormalities in the reproductive organs of the bulls and some blood testing for various transmissible diseases. Once cleared, a health certificate is made, and they are on their way to the bull stud.

After checking these bulls, I had physical exams to perform, some more blood testing and health charts to do on animals going to a sale. Then, I had two herd checks and 4 DA’s to cut.  The second DA patient seemed a bit more high-strung than the other cows. Even though we sedate them, if they are the least bit worked up before we even start, the sedation can be counteracted by adrenaline.  This particular cow did not even like me clipping her, and decided to let me know it with a kick to the shins.  Now this isn’t the first, nor the last time, that I’ve been kicked, but regardless, it’s always a surprise and still leaves a mark.  The bruise is now starting to show its lovely colors and is still a little tender to the touch. If the kick was the only wound of the week, I wouldn’t complain and sound like such a wimp, but then Wednesday happened.

About 3pm I get a call for a calving.  This is on a farm that handles most of the calvings themselves, so you know when they call; it’s going to be bad. This was an older cow that had a broken tail head.  So right where the top of her back meet her tail, it was broken down into the birth canal, making for little room for the calf to come out. To top it off, the calf was HUGE.  It was alive when I arrived. When we were discussing our options, the herdsman said that the cow was a priority and the calf was not.  This is never an easy thing to make a decision on, but based on the situation, we decided to try to save the cow.  Instead of doing a C-section, we were going to perform a fetotomy, which is cutting the calf out in pieces.  The wire we use is a cutting wire, so to try to get the wire positioned in a very small space with a very large calf and my own arms, is quite a feat.  My hands and arms show the battle wounds.  I always laugh when people ask me if I want a manicure to go with my pedicure. These hands are working hands, and not made to look pretty….

This was a mess of a calving. I ended up calling in another veterinarian to help as my arms were so fatigued from making the first three cuts.  The calf was just huge, the cow’s uterus had started to close down on the calf, and there was little room to do much of anything.  The only part left to get out was the hips. Now, I’m not a short person, and the farmer and the other veterinarian helping, are all at least 5’10,” so length of arms was not an issue. Unfortunately with the uterus clamped so tightly down on the calf and the cow being so big, we were unable to even reach the hips to pass the cutting wire around it.   We tried all the tricks we knew of, from trying to prolapse the uterus, pumping water into it to “float” the hips back to us, but all to no avail.  After 4.5 hours of trying, we decided we weren’t making any progress and it was time to call it quits.  The cow was eating and drinking by the time we left last night, but a call to the herdsman this morning revealed that the cow had died overnight as well.  There is only so much a cow can take, and although we really try our best, sometimes we lose it all.