It was another very rainy day today so we took this as an opportunity to do a health check on the herd. After finishing the morning calf chores we went to investigate the cows in the sick cow pen and to see how Marge was doing after having her D.A treated. When I checked Marge's status for ketosis she showed signs of improvement and further more Marge was ruminating! A healthy and happy cow will ruminate and chew their cud so seeing her do this was a very good sign. Afterwards we treated three more cows to low grade ketosis by giving them an IV of dextrose and pumping them. I know I have mentioned pumping before but I want to explain it in a little more detail. When we pump a cow we insert a long tube into her esophagus to safely administer fluids into her stomach. We will pump a five gallon bucket with two scoops of an alfalfa powder mixture with lukewarm water and propylene glycol for any cow that has ketosis, especially ones with severe ketosis. Our veterinarian taught me a few special tricks when tube feeding cows to help make it even easier! The first trick is to insert the tube normally and then press the open end of the tube against your mouth and breath in. If you can continue to breath in with no resistance, then you are in the trachea which is bad. If you breathe in and find resistance (negative pressure) then you are in the stomach! The second trick was to hug the neck of a large cow or place your hand on the neck of a calf. As you insert the tube if you can feel the slide pass your hand then you inserted the tube into the stomach. I was very grateful of our veterinarian for showing us this, as it will make tube feeding and pumping cows a lot easier.
Today we shipped 5,561 gallons of milk and had two new baby calves.
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