Jun 13
Milk Fever
Posted in Livestock , Baby Animals by David Wilson
The last few late spring calves have been born in the dairy herd. There will be no more now until late summer. Every cow has to have a calf each year in order to produce milk, and we have 180 dairy cows in the herd. The reality of life on the farm means sometimes cows are ill. A few days ago we had one cow with Milk Fever. This happens around calving time when a cow gets very low blood calcium and can become comatose.
The cow will go flat out and if you leave it for too long the cow will die. Milk Fever is a relatively common metabolic disorder and we can deal with it without a vet. It's not uncommon in third and fourth calving cows. If you give the cow a bottle of calcium borogluconate within half an hour the cow is usually fine.
On Saturday, my wife Caroline came to me and said, 'You better have a look at this - you've got a cow with a problem!' The cows are calving in the field behind our house and she'd spotted one flat out on its side. Mark, the herdsman, who always sorts these problems out, was on holiday. I gave the cow an injection of the calcium under the skin behind the shoulder. After half an hour she wasn't responding as quickly as we hoped (which can often be the case) so I gave her another bottle, half under the skin in the neck and half in a vein. When you give the calcium in the vein the cow often starts to come round as you are doing it because it's going straight into the blood stream. By the time I had finished we got her up and she was fine. She quickly re-bonded with her calf and, I trust, will live happily ever after.
