I decided to wait a week before writing this post, mainly because it was an emotional week. What started out as a runny nose, turned into a full blown emergency. One that scared both my husband and I, along with our vet. Let me rewind.
On Sunday of last week, June 7th, we decided to let Thelma, our Zebu calf have a day of supervised play in the pasture with the donkeys. She was tearing it up and having a blast. While she was out playing, my husband off hand mentioned that she did not finish her whole bottle that morning, which he did not see a problem with, however, it immediately sent off warning signals in my mind. This a calf that never and I do mean NEVER misses a meal. She is normally mooing for that bottle within minutes of what is her normal feeding time, so for her to not finish her bottle was strange. Regardless, she seemed fine and was having a good time playing, so I pushed it to the back of my mind and went about my work.
At dinner time Sunday though, she was still being weird about her bottle. She would drink a little, lose interest and a few minutes later she would drink a little more. Normally, she chugs the bottle and then runs up and hits your leg asking for more. This evening though, she barely finished her bottle, making it two bottles now that she had not really drank. Robert wondered if maybe she was starting to wean herself naturally, we knew that she was getting close to being weaned and that her doing it by herself was a possibility, so we decided not to worry too much about it that evening.
On Monday morning, I was down at the barn around 0630. Once again, Thelma had very little interest in her bottle. This time, after nearly 30 minutes of trying, she only drink about half. I noticed that it didn’t appear that she was eating any of the hay or grain in her stall either. She also was being less annoying than normal. We love her annoying self, but we would be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that her constant sucking on our boots or head butting our legs was anything other than annoying. I also noticed that she appeared to have a runny nose. Once barn chores were done, I sat down to do some research. I needed to make sure that there was nothing seriously wrong with my calf.
By 1030 that morning I was officially worried and so we called the vet to see if there was something we needed to do or if this warranted a visit. The vet was reassuring. Yes, it was considered a “serious” issue that Thelma was not eating and that she had a runny nose, but it would be an easily treatable situation. We had caught it early and she wanted us to get antibiotics into her quickly to keep her cold from turning into pneumonia, something that commonly happens in calves Thelma’s age. So off to the feed store I went to get the antibiotics and syringes. Meanwhile, Robert was trying to transition his day at work, to a work from home day in order to help me with Thelma.
Livestock are fun. Unless it is an emergency or a scheduled routine visit, the vet just talks you through things like antibiotic injections your first time. Then from there on out, you can handle common colds yourself. No one wants to give their child a shot and Thelma is that, one of our children. When all was said and done, Robert went to work at the house and I stayed at the barn to make sure she was okay.
On Monday evening and throughout Tuesday we did not see any improvement. We weren’t worried though, antibiotics take a couple days to work and the vet had said to call back on Wednesday or Thursday if we were still concerned.
Wednesday morning when we went to the barn, Thelma had noticeably lost weight, she had not drank a full bottle in over three days and was starting to lay around a lot. We called the vet to see what our next steps were, and she confirmed that at this point, she would need to come out. At this point I just wanted my sweet, highly annoying, milk loving calf back, so whatever we needed to do was fine.
Throughout the week whenever we had checked Thelma’s temperature, it had been high normal but when the vet arrived she officially had a fever. Her nose was still running, even after the antibiotics, her stool was starting to change and her eyes were now starting to be sunken in due to dehydration. Thelma received a fever reducer, some probiotics and some fluid. I felt like a normal mom with a sick child at the doctor, she essentially got some Tylenol, a yogurt, and some pedialyte. Once all her meds were in, she was 100% better. The vet gave us additional meds for the next couple days and because Thelma was feeling better said to go ahead and see if we could get a bottle in her.
I took a little longer than normal to make her bottle, as we were discussing how were going to handle getting all the meds in her each morning. I was away from the barn less than 15 minutes and thankfully when I went to take her bottle to her, Robert had decided to walk with me. We didn’t find our sweet, happy calf feeling better. Instead, she seemed intoxicated. She was stumbling, visibly confused and was exhausting herself trying to stand up. We immediately called the vet back. Thankfully, they had only gotten 10 minutes down the road. Robert stayed with Thelma, while I rushed to driveway to meet the vet. By the time I returned to the barn she was down, all the way down on her side.
Thelma’s normal heart rate is around 80-120 bpm, when the vet reached her, her rate was pushing 160 bpm. She was breathing nearly double her normal respiratory rate and she was completely incapable of holding her head up, let alone standing up. Vets use many of the same medications that are used on humans, and having grown up around medical terminology and working in the pharmaceutical industry for years, I recognize many of them. The first drug she was pulling was adenosine, used to slow the heart rate. While we waited for that to work she listened to Thelma’s lungs and noticed that she heard a crackling sound. We now knew what the problem was, her lungs were filling with fluid due to the amount of fluid that had been given to her to combat her dehydration. We needed lasix. Lasix is a drug that helps remove excess fluid buildup, and is not a drug that our vet uses frequently so the vet tech had to run back to the truck to locate it.
While we waited, the vet went ahead and pulled up epinephrine. At this point we were well past worried and I remember looking at my husband who had the same look on his face that I am sure was resonating on mine. We are going to lose our sweet Thelma. We knew that the vet was preparing for the worst case now, Thelma’s heart to stop. It was almost 10 minutes since the Adenosine had been given and her heart rate was not decreasing.
Zebu are a unique type of cattle, they have not been bred to be miniature, they are just naturally small. At three months old, Thelma is approximately 35-40 lbs. She will be closer to 250/300 when full grown. While most medications have dosage amounts on them for different types of animals that a vet will see, the uncommonness of the Zebu breed meant that none of the drugs had dosages pre-set for an animal of her size, so our vet was having to calculate everything manually. This takes time and during this experience, time was of the essence.
Once the lasix was calculated, she only got .2mL, we just had to wait. Within about 10 minutes we noticed that her breathing was slowing and that we heard water gushing as she was peeing off all the additional fluid that she had in her system. After about an hour total, our vet felt comfortable to leave. Thelma still had not gotten off her side but she was at least able to lift her head and rest it on our legs. She remained down for almost 4 more hours.
It has been a week since we experienced our first animal emergency and I am truly thankful that we now have our annoying little calf back. It took almost 4 days for her to get her strength back, but even on Thursday morning, after everything that happened on Wednesday, we saw improvement. We have learned that every animal is going to react differently to medications just like people do. Also, do to Thelma’s small size, we have to be a little more aware in making sure she gets proper dosages, since most packages did not have her in mind when they were written. We have an amazing vet, who has texted to check on Thelma several days while she was getting back to normal. Most of all, we were reminded that even with our animals, every day is a gift, that shouldn’t be taken for granted, even as they are trying to knock you down for their bottle.