Boys! Boys! Boys!!!!!

Today I had a unique opportunity to attend the New York State Fair Dairy Cattle Birthing Center. This is the first year this exhibit has been at the state fair and boy was it a hit!!! The Exhibit was brought to the fair by the New York Animal Agricultural Coalition and Cornell University.  Its goal was to allow those who may not come from a farming background to witness the live birth of a calf and speak candidly with members from all aspects of the dairy industry about animal agriculture and dairy farming.
 

Feeding one of the bulls from yesterday his breakfast!

The cows came from 6 different dairy farms all within an hour from the Syracuse, NY fair grounds.  Each farm supplied 6 cows that came in for a 2 day stay.  The cows were induced so that they would hopefully calve within their time at the fair.  Thursday was the 2^nd day for the cows from this particular farm so three had calved the day before.  All three had male (bull) calves.

The first cow of Thursday, had her water break at 9:30 in the morning.  As we were waiting for the cow to progress further into labor the tent began filling, and filling, and filling with people. By the time the cow was in full labor there had to have been at least 200-300 people in the tent watching.  By noon the first cow had calved with yet another boy!

It was a wonderful opportunity to answer questions that people had about cows in general. Most of the common questions that were asked were things that I have discussed before in previous posts, however I will reiterate the most popular questions asked today.

The most popular questions we had were:

How long is a cow pregnant?  Well the average gestation for a cow is very similar to a human in that it is 9 months or approximately 280 days.

Why don’t you let the calf nurse the mom? This is really for the health benefit of the calf. Although we strive to keep the calving area very clean, it is still not a sterile hospital room. There is still manure and bacteria in the environment.  Because the calf is a newborn, it has no immune system. We want to clean and disinfect the teats of the cow and harvest the colostrum as cleanly as possible rather than have the calf possibly ingest bacteria from the cow’s teats. We also remove the calf from the mom as quickly as possible to ensure that the calf is protected and cared for appropriately in case the mother does not have a good motherly instinct.

What happens to the male calves? Since only the females produce milk, the bull calves are either raised to be used for breeding purposes or sold to be raised for meat. 

My most unusual question of the day was from a young boy in the crowd, who bravely walked through hundreds of people to approach me with the microphone. Now, any dairy or beef farmer reading this may chuckle to themselves as I did when the question was asked.   

The question was:

Can cows have mental problems?  Now this question was being asked as the head of the calf was in the birth canal and only the front feet and tongue were sticking out. I mentioned chuckling to myself earlier because those of us that work with cattle day in and day out, understand that every cow has their own personality and yes, sometimes they are quite crazy and we do wonder if there is a mental problem…. In this case, I presume the boy was wondering if the calf was getting enough oxygen with the head stuck in the birth canal.  Because the umbilical cord was still attached, we assured him that the calf was still getting oxygen, but it is something that we carefully watch to be sure the calf hasn’t been in the birth canal with the umbilical cord pinched off, for TOO long causing oxygen deprivation and therefore some neurologic issues.

As we were finishing up havesting the colostrum from the first cow, a second cow’s water broke.  She had her baby around 2:30pm and it was the 5^th bull of the group!!! When we look at yearly averages, it truly does end up 50:50 males to females. However, there may be stretches of time where there are a large number of bulls born and then another stretch of all females.  This farm just happened to bring 5 cows that were all pregnant with bulls! The 6^th cow had not yet calved by the time I had to leave so maybe the 6th time is the charm for a girl!

The farm owner harvesting the colostrum from the first mom of the day!

I could go on and on about questions that were asked and the answers to those questions. I strongly encourage you to ask questions of myself or other members of the dairy industry if you have them. As our t-shirts said today:  “Ask me! There’s no UDDER place to get the answer!!!”

Overall it was a wonderful opportunity for members of the dairy industry to share our story.  I had countless people come up to me throughout the two births today  and tell me how much they learned from their time at the Birthing Center.  I truly feel blessed to have been born, raised and continue to work in the dairy industry. Although we still face challenges, this industry is truly amazing, and there are so many people that work so hard to ensure that the products you get from a dairy farm, are the most wholesome products they can be!

 I am so proud of the hard work that went into this exhibit from various people, the farmers that took time out of their very busy schedules to share their personal stories, and tirelessly care for these animals.

Udder Fibro..... what?????

I was called this week to one of my regular herd check clients for a cow that was “bleeding from her udder.”  This is usually classified as an emergency, get here ASAP kind of call, as cows can bleed to death in a matter of minutes if the cut is severe enough.  I’ve mentioned in a previous post, that cows must pump an average of 500 gallons of blood through their udder a day, to produce 1 gallon of milk. So cows that are making 80 pounds of milk a day, are pumping about 5000 gallons of blood through their udder during the course of the day.  There are two major vessels and many smaller veins that supply the udder with all this blood. SO, when a farmer calls and tells you that they have a cow bleeding from her udder, yes, it truly IS an emergency.

Luckily I had just finished a herd check and was close to the farm so could get there quite quickly. When I arrived, the herdsman had the cow restrained in a hoof trimming chute and was holding pressure on the bleeding area.  Luckily it was NOT one of the major milk veins bleeding, but rather a large mass on the front of the udder.  We often refer to these masses as “Udder Rot.”  Not a very scientific name, that’s for sure, but it gets the point across.  The true scientific name is Udder Cleft Dermatitis.

These udder rot lesions are often very foul smelling and can become quite an issue when not taken care of at an early stage. The lesions are most commonly found in front of the two front teats and right where the udder attaches to the body wall. They usually start from some kind of irritation to the udder, such as a mange mite, edema or pressure necrosis of some kind. Once the skin is irritated, bacteria from the environment move in and enjoy the nice warm, moist habitat and continue to “eat away” or cause further damage to the area.  The bacteria that inhabit the lesions, are what causes the foul smell that is often associated with udder rot.

Because the body is amazing and does everything it can to heal itself, it can sometimes overcompensate.  When this occurs, as it did in this case, there is excess production of tissue that looks like a giant wart (fibropapliloma) or “proud flesh.” Some of this has to do with the bacteria that are in the lesion and the rest has to do with the body trying to heal itself.  There are lots and lots of blood vessels in this tissue but no nerves.  When the mass gets caught on something or stepped on or even bumped, it can start bleeding and can bleed quite severely. 

In this case, the cow had the mass hanging from the udder and there was another cow that was showing signs of heat (or estrus). Exhibiting natural estrus behavior, this cow tried to mount the other cow and the mass on the udder was aggravated. 

Because of how large this mass was, and the number of blood vessels that I know course through the udder, I was not brave enough to surgically try to remove the mass and then make the udder “normal” again. Instead my approach was to cauterize the bleeding vessels and have the herdsman start to aggressively treat the mass with a killing spray.  As you can see from the picture, there is quite a bit of blood on the chute. There was probably about 3-4L of blood on the ground which is significant. Her mucous membranes were starting to get pale, but she still had the strength to stand.  With a little fluid therapy, Iron injections and TLC, I think she will be just fine.  

A blood transfusion is an option if the cow had lost a more significant amount of blood. However, a cow can lose up to 6L of blood without any risk. She may be weak for a day or so, but again, the body is amazing and new red blood cells had already started making their way into circulation, the minute she started bleeding.  

To prevent further issues with these types of udder rot lesions, the best thing to do is to catch them early, and spray them with a copper sulfate or tetracycline mixture. The area is warm and moist which the bacteria love. To disrupt that habitat, the sore needs to be dried out and the bacteria killed.  Treating the animals for mange mites also helps decrease the incidence of udder rot lesions.  When they get to be large pendulous masses like this cow, not many veterinarians look forward to the call of when, not if, but when, these masses rip and start to bleed.