“Oh Lord, please help me….what in the name of all earthly bovine anatomy is going on in here?” …my first thoughts as my right arm made its initial approach to a rather impolite distance into the birth canal of a parturient black Angus cow.
I wondered if I hadn’t made a grave mistake in agreeing to take on this dystocia.
But it wasn’t a mistake. It was Providence. I’d learn that soon enough.
A few hours earlier I’d received a call from Rose, a widowed cattle woman who’d sweetly befriended my family over the years. She normally called me about her chickens and dogs, but this day, it was one of her beloved beef cows. She knew that at the time, I was working in small animal emergency practice, seldom treating hoof stock those days, save my own farm animals and those of family. However, that Sunday morning, the town large animal vet could’t be reached, and Rose had reached the end of what she could do for her cow.
“Good morning, is this Dr. Bork?” she began.
Friends and family never call me “doctor”, but for one reason: the emergency house call.
“Hey, good mornin’ hon,” Rose continued. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but I’ve got this cow…she’s my last to calve. Well I went out this morning and saw a hoof sticking out, so we brought her into the corral. I couldn’t get ahold of anyone to give me a hand, so my friend Sue came over and we tried to pull the calf. You know Sue Cuthbert? She just lost her husband, poor thing. Anyway, she’s still pretty strong and is really great with this stuff. But this calf just ain’t gonna’ budge. Think you could come take a look at her?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” I assured her. “I’ll load up the kids. We’ll head over and see what we can do.”
Tim happened to be out of town that day, so my hopes for some muscle to assist my efforts were for naught. It was just going to be me and my mini-crew of three.
We quickly changed clothes, leaving church outfits laying across the ends of beds and throwing the morning’s chore jeans back on. My mind was switching gears into vet mode as I zipped my coveralls and shut the door behind us.
As we loaded my vet boxes and ourselves into the truck, AvaLynne, only about seven at the time, asked, “Mommy? Aren’t you not supposed to work on Sunday? What about church?”
The ride over to Rose’s ranch afforded all of six minutes to explain via rearview mirror Sunday school, Luke 14:5:
“Then He answered them saying, ‘Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?’”
Satisfied with mom’s sermon snippet or not, all three of them bailed out of the truck and scurried through the corral railing as soon as we arrived. After giving hugs to Rose and gawking at the massive cow filling the unsqueezed squeeze chute, the girls were off to picking dandelions around the fence line, as nearly-ten, big brother Silas hovered nearby awaiting my requests for help, which he (wisely) knew were imminent.
Setting my equipment down on a small, cowpie-less island of dirt to the right of the chute, I began to visually examine my now patient from ten feet away, slowly moving toward her rump and giving it a scratch before moving toward her head. The switch of her tail & shift of her weight off of her right hind foot indicated that she’d have no qualms busting my patella that day. Thankfully, a two by four had already been stationed across the chute just behind her hocks, preventing her kicks from landing on their target biped.
The cow was tired. She’d clearly been at this for much longer than Rose and Sue. Her barrel chest heaved with each breath, pressing her mammoth belly into the bars of the chute. She was a bit dehydrated, only made worse by her frustrated bellering and hypersalivation. She threw her head when I entered her periphery and rocked her shoulders into the head gate, clanging the metal of the chute, only adding to her vexation.
After an abbreviated physical exam, I wiggled my fingers down into a palpation sleeve, and circled back to the task at hand. Two hooves protruded from the cow’s vulva. Their presentation told me the calf was head first. But the right hoof extended about 5 inches beyond the left.
“The left elbow must be stuck behind the pubic bone,” I encouraged myself. “Easy fix…might even be able to make it to church today after all.”
Those little thought bubbles joyfully floated over my head as I filled my gloved hand with obstetric lube. Stepping over the calf chains laying on the ground from Sue & Rose’s earlier attempts at delivering the calf, I moved the cow’s tail to the left and braced for a kick.
She did not disappoint. However, now secure in my trust of the two by four’s ability to shield my shins, I proceeded to make my way into the birth canal, my right hand guided by forelimbs below and vaginal wall above.
Re-enter the “Oh Lord, help me” moment. A calf nose, right shoulder forward, left elbow behind the pubic bone…I did not find. Those jolly thought bubbles burst, heat rushed to my cheeks, and I knew it was time to settle in for the kind of work that my shoulders would remember for days.
I struggled to create a mental picture of the intrauterine situation from what I could palpate. My hand’s vision was blurred by the palpation sleeve, so it was quickly shed, arm washed & lubed, and back in we went.
The birth canal was dreadfully dry, as fetal membranes had been destroyed with all the pushing and pulling. Having birthed a few of my own, I ached for this poor cow. Silas stood at the ready, and repeatedly pumped my hand full of OB lube for me to reapply to her vaginal vault.
I pushed further in. Following the right leg, I palpated the right elbow and shoulder, then fanned to the right, only to find a neck turned back to the left. Damnit.
Next I grabbed the left forelimb and tracked it back, expecting to discover an elbow and be able to feel the calf’s left shoulder attached to it. On the contrary, it led my hand far beyond, only to discover that it connected…to a right shoulder.
Double damnit.
Twins.
Ridiculously stuck twins.
“Rose! Come over here, I need to show you something,” I called.
Pointing to the hooves I told her, “I am not going to be able to get these out at the same time.”
Rose’s countenance sank. “Ok, do what you have to do. I trust you.”
Immediately I regretted my little joke, realizing that she thought I was going to have to perform a fetotomy.
“Oh! No, no, no! It’s not what you think! Rose, these hooves belong to two different calves! Twins!”
Her tired eyes twinkled.
“You know, this gal’s daddy was a twin! But oh…,” becoming somber again, “that means we were pulling on two different calves at the same time?”
“Yep,” I replied, “but thankfully the calves won that tug of war.”
We both chuckled. Rose left the chute to go back to chatting with Sue and playing with my girls, while Silas and I went back to work.
My trusty, little assistant got busy filling 60cc syringes with OB lube while I snaked a red rubber tube over the first calf’s neck, toward it’s head. One by one, we attached the filled syringes to the tube and injected lubricant until we had coated the front end of the calf.
Placing my right hand on the calf’s right shoulder, and gripping a chute bar with my left, I heaved the calf backward into the uterus until it’s neck extended and its head relaxed into normal position. Then I reached down over the pelvic brim and found its left front hoof. Pulling it up and over, the first calf was finally in position for proper delivery.
But the second calf’s left forelimb was still in the way. It takes some mental gymnastics to convince oneself to push a leg all the way back into the uterus once it’s out. But in it had to go. As weak as she was, the cow’s uterus was at this point stimulated to contract, and my arm was wrung like a soggy rag as I struggled to push the second calf back. My hand went numb and I could do nothing but grit my teeth and wait for the contraction to pass. When the smooth muscles relaxed once more, I pressed forward again and was able to move the calf sufficiently out of the way.
Drying my hands and the exposed metacarpals of the first calf, I grasped each leg and made my first attempt at delivering it. Straining backward with all my weight, barely any progress was made.
Nearby lay a four by four post on the ground. A little re-arranging and maneuvering it behind the cow, and a good stool it made for my five foot four inches to gain some leverage on this altitudinous Angus. Still, progress was slow and excruciating.
About this time, Sue appeared over my shoulder.
“Maybe we can both give it a go?” I asked her.
She nodded and climbed up onto the post with me. Each of us one leg in hand, we leaned backward and pulled. Without thinking, I placed my right foot against the end of the chute and engaged every muscle in backward motion.
The scene went a little sideways once the calf’s head was visible, as it’s shoulders cleared the pelvis and intense traction was no longer necessary. Balancing on only one foot on a four inch wide post, the calf’s momentum got the best of me and before I could put on the brakes, I was flat on my back with an eighty pound, lubed up, bull calf atop.
He shook his floppy, edema-filled ears and laughter broke out all around. My girls howled with their little faces and dandelion bouquets poking through the wood slats, as mommy lay sprawled out on the ground covered in calf and blood and all the nasties that live on the ground in a cattle chute.
Rolling over with a grunt and replacing my filthy ball cap, I left the calf to Rose’s care, and washed up to deliver the next. With a renewed air of confidence, the cow was again pushing. Reaching through the placental fluids, my hand was able to quickly orient the second calf’s forelimbs. Smaller than the first and with her mama’s help, this calf was delivered with almost no effort on my part, of which my bushed muscles were grateful. She slopped to the ground and with a sneeze, began to breathe.
The cow and calves had endured a toilsome labor, but they were alive. After cleaning mama cow, checking her over once more, and begging her pardon for such a rude introduction, I set her free from the headgate and she went straight to mothering her calves. It took the better part of an hour for them to stand reliably, but once they did, the twins knew where to look for their first colostrum.
By the time the kids got hungry for lunch, two calves stood, tails waggling, nursing at their mother’s flanks. Rose leaned her weathered arms against the corral, overseeing her trio’s every move with relief and devotion. The heifer calf being a freemartin seemed insignificant at that point, so that conversation was left for another day.
We stealthily packed up and headed home, knowing that as soon as Rose noticed we were leaving, she’d abandon her treasured vigil and anxiously shuffle to the house for some cash to shove in my pocket. That could be left for another day, too.
This reminds me of reading all those James Herriot books as a child(and of course as an adult). I always dreamed of becoming a vet, but it never materialized. What a fantastic story to read, I hope your muscles recovered easily and those calves are still going strong! That must be a wonderful feeling bringing two living things into the world like that. I grew up with black angus and we had a similar twin situation. One was red colored the other black. But unfortunately she tried to give birth up in the hills and we didn’t know until it was too late. We found her later with her two calves presenting but all had died. She was my favorite cow, so friendly and sweet. To find her like that was hard for a child to process, but also a part of that wonderful country life that I miss now. It teaches you so many things. Thank you for helping this sweet woman, I’m sure she feels that gratitude every time she looks at those little calves kicking their heels up with the joy alone of life. I remember in the spring looking up at the hill above the barn and seeing those wild calves running without abandon across the hill chasing each other and kicking in the air for no reason at all but because they can and they were free and alive. Best thing ever!
What a wonderful morning! 💙💖