On most of the blogs that I read...not all, but most (mine included)...we tend to talk about the interesting, good, or fun things that happen, and shy away from the not so good. I think that's normal...we don't want to talk about what goes wrong.
I went back and forth on this one, and I must admit...I'm writing about this now that things are looking a bit better for this cow!
On Wednesday morning, as we milked down through the first two rows of cows, Jim suddenly noticed that "Mary" had tramped her one front teat. Mary was fresh only a few days, and her udder was still swollen and cumbersome. Apparently as she stood up, her sharp hoof caught on her teat and cut it badly. This can be a death sentence for a cow...in fact it usually is!
We debated on what to do. Jim milked her out as best he could, and called the vet. Depending on the cut, the vet can stitch her teat.
The vet came and took a look at her injury. The sphincter muscle was intact, but barely. Had it been cut, she would have constantly leaked milk, and would have likely gotten mastitis, which would have given her a very grim prognosis. (mastitis in a cow with an otherwise healthy udder is a totally different scenario than mastitis in a cow with this type of injury)
They decided that the best route to go was to trim away the damaged tissue and allow the wound to heal, rather than trying to stitch it back together. The vet numbed her up, Jim held her tail, and I held the light. (I don't do up close and personal bloody stuff very well, so I was hoping it would go ok, and it did!) It was actually quite interesting to watch. He cleaned her damaged teat thoroughly with iodine and alcohol, and got out his sterile tools. He was pretty slick with that scalpel, and the cow didn't flinch!
That was the easy part...
Now, we have to be diligent to see that her wound doesn't get infected, and that she doesn't get mastitis. Jim milks her three good quarters with the milker...
Then he carefully cleans her teat with an alcohol pad...
And inserts an individually wrapped teat infusion cannula into her teat...
The milk drains into a bucket. She puts about 2 1/2 quarts of milk into the bucket each time, which we use for feeding calves. The wound is healing nicely! That's a scab you can see there. If it continues to heal, her teat will be shaped a little funny, but that's a small price to pay!
Afterwards, Jim sprays her teat with this barrier spray to keep any dirt out of the wound...
As you can imagine, this can be time consuming and challenging! Where there are cows, there is dirt and manure...it's just a fact of life. No matter how hard we try, her udder will get dirty, so therein lies the biggest challenge...to keep that wound clean and free of infection.
So far, we have been very pleased with her progress. She is a very cooperative animal, and we've seen no signs of infection. Jim will soon try putting the milker on all four quarters, but not too soon, or it could pull the scab off and we'd be starting over from square one.
We're really hoping that this will be a success story!
