Our sick cow didn’t make it

It was a long shot from the beginning. A vet, who I actually think has to be smarter than a doctor (his patients can’t tell him what’s wrong or answer questions), had already washed his hands of this cow and said there was nothing more that could be done. Yet, we tried. We did get the impacted rumen cleared. We did get her to poop a relatively solid poop. We did get gut activity going again with our treatments.

But she was severely dehydrated and emaciated from the beginning. There was no way we could get enough fluids in her to offset the down hill slide she’d already taken. And her liver was beginning to fail before we ever started working on her. It was a hail Mary pass from the beginning.

But yesterday afternoon, Erin and I consulted over her at the barn. The 4pm feeding was a no go. She was too weak to do anything. She couldn’t eat or drink on her own. We didn’t have IV fluids to administer (although we had everything else for and IV). And to top it all off, her trocar had become dislodged from her rumen meaning we couldn’t administer anything else directly without tubing her. The only way to put it back was to open her up again and basically repeat the surgery. In her weakened condition, that just wasn’t a good idea. That basically left us with nothing else we could do.

Over the course of the night, she passed peacefully. She’ll be buried here on the farm, as we deal with the effects of Hurricane Mathew passing overhead. Hopefully that’s all we’ll have to do with the hurricane.

Thank you everyone for the well wishes. And thank you Erin, Lucy, and Miguel for all the help trying to save this lost cause.