I’m haunted by Sesame Street on a difficult day at the veterinary coalface

When all the calls on one day start with the letter ‘P’, it’s hard to get the puppets’ earworm alphabet song out of my head

This week’s veterinary segment is sponsored by the letter ‘P’. ’80s and ’90s films, ads and cartoons take up much more of the memory bank in my brain than they should. In fact, if I could remember less of the lines from TV shows like The A Team, and more about pharmacology, maybe I would have fared a lot better in my college exams.

I pity the fool that asks me to explain how exactly certain antibiotics work at a cellular level.

There is now the added blow that some of the vets, nurses and admin staff in the practice give me a blank (and sometimes sympathetic) look when I reference a classic ’80s show that had finished airing long before they were born.

That aside, for those of you who remember Sesame Street, there was always a small segment of the show that centred on objects that all started with the same letter — and an earworm ‘letter of the day’ song.

Well, one day last week, every case I saw was dominated by an issue that started with the letter ‘P’.

Peritonitis

The first call-out was to a cow that was “dull in herself”. At this time of year, this could be caused by just about anything. A recently calved cow is the highest-risk cow in the herd when it comes to sickness.

We are seeing milk fever, ketosis and displaced abomasums daily. The dip in immunity post-calving leads to an increase in cases of mastitis, metritis, scour and pneumonia.

So, in the case of this cow that had calved eight days previously, the list of possible ailments was as long as your arm.

While I listened to her heart and ‘pinged’ her for a displaced stomach, the veterinary student who was seeing practice with me put on a long green glove and examined the other end.

“Well?” I asked the student, who was shoulder deep in the cow with a puzzled look on her face. “I don’t know what’s wrong but I know it’s not right,” she said. I changed places with her and quickly realised that things were indeed “not right”.

Everything was starting to stick together. It was like putting your hand into dough. This cow had peritonitis.

A quick ‘fibrinogen test’ can confirm peritonitis or similar conditions. We take a blood sample and put into the test bottle. If the blood clots in less than five minutes, there is severe inflammation at play.

For student education purposes, we checked this cow’s blood. It clotted in the test tube almost instantly. The prognosis was not good. This cow had had a very difficult calving and the most likely cause of the peritonitis was a uterine or cervical tear.

Bacteria invade the space around the organs in the abdomen, causing inflammation, ultimately leading to the formation of fibrin, which is like small strings of elastic, sticking everything together as it forms.

The intestines slow down and become non-functional and obstructed and lots of fluid begins to pool in the abdomen. In severe cases, if you push a closed fist into the abdomen from the right side, the sloshing of fluid can be heard.

One of our lecturers in college used to call this noise “the graveyard jangles” as there was only one outcome when a cow’s condition was this advanced.

This cow was not as bad as this, so we gave her lots of pain relief, pumped her with fluids and put her on a long course of antibiotics. Even at that, her chances of survival are slim.

Prolapse

The next call promised to be more straightforward. The cow we were going to see was calving. It was a pedigree Hereford and a neighbour who had been left in charge while the farmer was at a family wedding didn’t want to take any chances.

A nice handy one, I thought to myself. And in the beginning, it was. I allowed the vet student to put a hand in first and she told me all seemed well and the calf was presenting normally. We put on the ropes and with a relatively easy pull, delivered a bull calf into the world. Mighty!

The cow got up and started to lick the calf so, with our work done, we began to wash up. I had my shoes on and I popped a head round the door of the shed to make sure all was well before I left. All was not well. In less than five minutes, the cow had laid down and prolapsed her entire uterus behind her.

This happens a lot when cows have been calving for a long time and continue to push even after the calf is born. This lady had no hardship at all, but heavier cows are more likely to prolapse and this one, at close to the tonne, was in that bracket.

A torturous half-hour followed where two of us just about managed to get the prolapse back in, after much pushing and shoving, peppered with some colourful language.

‘Pinch’

Weary after the monstrous effort of replacing the prolapse, we drove on to the next patient. The farmer had told one of our admin staff that he had given a weanling “a bit of a pinch”.

An odd one, I thought, but hopefully a quick one as my stomach was rumbling with the hunger at this stage. Dinner would have to wait unfortunately. The weanling was waiting in the crush, head restrained in the head-gate. His tongue was hanging out and he was drooling bloody saliva.

The “pinch” turned out to be the understatement of the year. He had squeezed the weanling’s head between the back tyre of the tractor and the feed barrier. The pressure had fractured the weanling’s jaw. Luckily (well, as lucky as you can be with a broken jaw) the fracture was right at the front of the jaw, between the two front teeth.

This meant that once the bullock was sedated, we could secure the jaw back together, using special wire.

Pneumonia

The next farm visit was more straightforward. A group of calves had been slow to drink that morning and were now very subdued.

When we examined them, the majority had a very high temperature and a clear nasal discharge.

This was most likely a viral pneumonia so anti-inflammatories were given to all calves that had a high temperature. The most likely cause is RSV, but we took some nasal swabs to confirm nonetheless.

While we wait for the results, the farmer is going to vaccinate the rest of the calves with an intranasal vaccine to prevent against RSV. Every day counts when it comes to sick calves and disease prevention.

Poached egg

Finally, I got home for my tea. Two home-produced poached eggs on toast completed the day sponsored by the letter P. Q might prove more difficult tomorrow.