More bovine updates

Here's the latest on the cows.

Matilda's inverted teat is still inverted. It's the weirdest thing. We've tried using a modified syringe to exert pressure; nothing doing. Next we tried the powerful suction of a shop vac; nothing doing. (Matilda is one patient cow, let me tell you.)

The best we can hope for is to get a stream of milk going, which actually happens on a quasi-regular basis. The funny thing is, the quarter is not warm (as in, fever-warm), and the milk when it squirts out is perfectly clean - not the slightest hint of mastitis. The quarter is still tight and full but she doesn't seem to be in any discomfort.

The teat doesn't squirt continuously (I wish it did!), but when it does squirt, there's a pretty good stream. Here's a puddle of milk with a trail where Matilda walked away.

One of you suggested mixing a little apple cider vinegar with Matilda's grain, and I've been faithfully doing that. Whether or not it's working, the fact is she has not had one iota - not even a hint - of mastitis so far! So thank you, whoever suggested the vinegar.

I just put in a call to the U.C. Davis Vet-Med Hospital (I'm a U.C. Davis alumni) and explained the issue to a professor with expertise in dairy cattle, and emailed him a photo of the teat in question. We'll see what his prognosis is.

Here's Pearly, Matilda's yearling calf, meeting her little brother for the first time.

"Aw Sis!"

Thor's scours has totally cleared up, by the way.

Whenever I milk Matilda, Don puts Thor on a lead rope and keeps him right next to his mama. This keeps both animals calm.

Then after every milking, Don walks Thor around on the lead rope to start training him. The first few times, Thor braced himself. Little calves are strong! But Don patiently lets Thor brace himself until he realizes it's a lot more comfortable to stop fighting.

After an initial bit of stubbornness, he walks quite nicely on a lead rope. We've been walking him two or three times a day.

Yesterday when we got home from church, we found Thor had gotten into the hay barn and had somehow managed to wedge himself between two hay bales (go figure). He couldn't back up and he couldn't go forward.

Matilda was unhappy, of course.

But we hoisted him out from between the bales and got him out of the haybarn.

Thor immediately dove for mama. A little comfort food, don'cha know.

Are they men or are they louts?

In an interesting coincidence, just after posting In Praise of Men I saw this article on how Louts Are Taking Over the Planet.

This article examines a breed of men which the writer apparently comes across with great frequently but whom I (fortunately) seldom encounter: the lout. And he laments that young men are emulating louts and therefore louts are growing in number.

"The male image has gone through all sorts of transformations, especially over the last 50 years when feminism evolved and obligated men to adjust to the new circumstances of coequal women," writes author Neal Gabler. "The old strong, silent type, essentially a breadwinner and breeding stud, gradually gave way to the sensitive male, the engaged male, the homebody male who shared child-rearing and household duties with his wife...Of course, some men found this emasculating and actively resisted the process. Some tried to laugh it off. But culturally speaking, there may have been a less overt resentment that has been simmering for a long time and that may account for the recent eruption of the lout. He seems to be a form of passive-aggressive revenge against what some men see as the indignities feminism has forced upon them — indignities that have been exacerbated by economic hardship."

The author points out how Louts are not tough capable men able to rebuild car engines in a single bound. Nor are they sophisticates who know their way around a wine menu. Instead, he defines a lout as "someone who is proudly stuck in a kind of adolescent parody of manhood that conflates insensitivity and machismo."

So -- do you know any louts? Or do you know more Men (capitalized) than louts? I'm sure they're here in rural America, but I've never come across any I could truly call a lout.

On second thought, I met one once. Nasty fellow.

In praise of men

A reader left a comment on my blog post Marriage and Rush-Hour Traffic as follows:

I'm just to the right of conservative and tend to adhere to traditional labels and values, but I have to admit I bristle at being called "simple" while women are considered to be "complex." And "simple" usually means "sex, food, and admiration." I'm sure a hundred books have been written on the subject and it's an issue far more "complex" than can be discussed here; however, I think men are a lot more complex than they are given credit for. Indeed the very character or the very nature of a man tends to result in an outward display of "simplicity". There's a lot going on below that surface that women don't know about or choose not to explore because it makes them uncomfortable or because they simply don't want to deal with it. It doesn't help that men are labeled "simple" because it predisposes women and wives to believe there's not complex worth discovering. All I'm saying is that there's probably a vast treasure trove of complex ideas, behaviors, and (dare I say it?) emotions lurking below the surface within your husbands that'll likely remain locked up forever because of current labels and gender expectations in our society.

I thought now would be a good time to clarify my position on the simple/complex issue because I don’t want any misunderstandings about my attitude and philosophy toward men.

If you’ve read many of my WND columns or if you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of men. So when I refer to men as “simple creatures” I do NOT mean it as an insult. Far from it! “Simple” can be extraordinarily profound.

When people say women are complicated, it’s not a compliment. To me, the adjective “complicated” denotes a weary acknowledgment that women are moody, emotional, hormone-laden creatures whose moods cannot always be anticipated or soothed, and who are triggered by a bewildering array of stimuli that “set them off.” And since it is not usually in a man’s nature to tune in to whatever subtle (and changing – always changing) cues his woman is giving off and expected to read, then women are described as “complicated” because it’s the most apt description out there.

I have a deep appreciation for the simple things in life. So deep, in fact, that I wrote a book about it. The essence of simplicity is making good, sound, intelligent choices. When a man embodies the manly qualities I admire (read this to see what I mean), then those choices make life easier for those around him. Some might consider it a "simple" thing when a man works to provide for his family – rather than cluttering up his decision with emotional baggage as women tend to do – but his dedication simplifies life for his family. Ain’t it cool?

And men are simple to please. They really are. Please don’t misinterpret this to mean I believe men have no depth or complexity to them. Of course they do! Instead I think it’s a blessing that for all the hard, nasty, dirty, ugly work men do, all they ask in return is for us women to appreciate and love them. I find that incredible.

I find men are straightforward; they don’t expect those around them to be mind readers (as women often do). Their yes means yes and their no means no.

To a man (I don’t mean a “male” but a true man), their word is their bond and their sense of honor is strong. Those are simple and profound qualities. Can you imagine how much worse off we would be in this world if men didn’t have the qualities they have? Men are the ones who make the simple decision: defend their country and/or their loved ones, or die trying. Men are the ones who make the simple decision: work hard or let my family (and my honor) suffer. Men are the ones who spend their entire lives making simple, profound, honorable choices that ease the burdens of those around them. Is it any wonder I love men?

The person who left this comment wrote, “There's a lot going on below that surface that women don't know about or choose not to explore because it makes them uncomfortable or because they simply don't want to deal with it.”

He’s right, of course. Because men don’t verbally “angst” all the time like women do, women often forget men have feelings and emotions. But men suck it up. Men don’t complain. Men deal with it. Men don’t burden those around them with an endless stream of petty woes as women frequently do. You’ve heard two women talking for hours and hashing and re-hashing and RE-hashing and RE-HASHING the same ol’ same ol’. But men don’t do that. They are creatures of action, of results. Their instinct is to fix a problem, not to dwell on it endlessly.

Of course, sometimes “fixing” a problem can have devastating consequences. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a very real affliction and comes from witnessing and dealing with horrors. But men throughout history have fought wars to protect family and homelands. Without their ability to “suck it up” until such time as they can “let it go” and deal with the emotional aftermath, history would be very different. (And we’d probably all be speaking German.)

And what helps a man heal is the love of his wife and children: the respect they give him in the home and the praise and admiration he receives from those he loves. Throughout history, women have helped their men heal because the men had the strength and bravery to tackle the problem, and women had the compassion and gentleness to help heal the hurt.

That’s why men and women complement each other. Feminists would like us to believe there are no differences between the genders except for physical attributes. They are wrong. Men need the gentle nurturing qualities of women. Women need the strong protective qualities of men.

Unless they’ve been emasculated by a domineering and/or feminist woman (wife or mother), or unless boys are raised in a culture which denigrates their genetic predisposition to respect women, work hard, and provide for their families, then most men rise to the occasion. Most men are wonderful creatures whose strength and protective instincts we take for granted until those qualities are needed - or worse, gone.  If our society continues to emasculate men, if the boyish instincts are not guided into appropriate channels, then our society will lose an enormous part of what made our country great.

And that’s why I love men.

Making the poppity corn

Remember that song "Popcorn" that hailed from the late disco era? Here's a pretty funny Muppets skit called "Popcorn." My kids love it.

Bovine updates

Thor is much better today! His scours has decreased and he's prancing around like... well, like a newborn.

He got brave enough to leave his pen for the first time too, but not at first. I had to clean the pen around him because he wouldn't go out...

...even when Matilda encouraged him.

But once outside, there was no stopping him. He gamboled about and explored and napped and acted like he was never scared to go outside.

Nothing new on the magic disappearing teat, however. We got three large syringes...

...and cut the tip off one of them. We sanded and filed the edges smooth.

What does a magic disappearing teat look like? Well as you can imagine it's pretty hard to photograph, but I tried. Here I held the camera underneath and got this shot:

The teat is just left of center top.

Here's another blind under-the-udder shot:

The teat is the little whitish bump on the extreme left. As of this posting, we haven't tried the syringe suction yet. I'll report what happens when we try it.

Socialized medicine - fifty years ago

A friend sent me this YouTube link to an advertisement from the 1950's narrated by a young(er) Ronald Reagan, warning against the evils of socialized medicine. I found it fascinatingly prescient.

Stupid ^%$&^**$(%% country living.....

It's been a hell of a day.

It all started out so nicely. Matilda was bright-eyed. Little Thor was bushy-tailed. Everything was going well.

While cleaning Matilda's pen this morning, I noticed Thor kept nursing only on Matilda's left front teat. The left back quarter of her udder is dead (killed off by a bad case of mastitis two years ago) but the other three quarters work well. So why was Thor only using that one teat?

Ever mindful of mastitis, I walked around to Matilda's right side and squirted some milk from her right front teat. Clean pure milk, no sign of mastitis. So far so good. I reached back to squirt from her right rear teat.

It was gone.

I mean, no kidding - the teat was gone. It's like waking up and finding your right foot is missing or something. How does a significant body part just disappear?

And let me tell you, I looked. And groped. And felt. And groped some more. It was just...gone. It was freaky.

After kneeling in the barn muck and looking carefully, I determined that somehow the teat had been totally - and I mean completely - swallowed up by the turgid udder. Certainly that quarter was tight as a drum and hard as a rock with milk. But with the teat quite literally flush against the skin of the udder, how the hell was I supposed to milk her out and provide relief?

A little probing and I was able to get a stream of milk to come out, but without a teat to grab hold of, it was only temporary.

Milk squirting from the missing teat (side view).

Milk squirting, view from behind.  The small bump on the left is the forward left teat visible around the curve of the udder.

Okay fine. I knew it was time to start milking Matilda anyway - gotta keep vigilant for mastitis - but I wasn't planning on doing it right this second. So I finished feeding the livestock and waited for the rest of the family to get up so Don could help me clean out the items that had cluttered up the milking pen. We moved the heavy stuff that somehow got shoved there in the last few months (a sheet of siding, a bicycle, the log splitter, a friend's saddle, etc.) and I got all the accouterments together to milk.

Well the milking went fine except I simply couldn't budge that inverted teat. There was nothing to grab. The saving grace is when I pushed and prodded on the udder a bit, it started squirting on its own for a few minutes, and there was no hint of mastitis. (Yet.)

Okay fine. We decided to let Matilda and Thor loose in the driveway and give the new guy a glimpse of the watery sunlight we were having. He didn't want to leave the barn - it's a big wide scary world out there - but that was okay, mama was nearby.

Meanwhile I had to figure out what to do about that inverted teat. I called the vet clinic that services the dairy herd from which we originally got Matilda. They've walked me through a number of issues in the past (notably the mastitis), and I continue to consult them because they specialize in dairy cows.

But when I spoke to a vet, he was clueless. Baffled. Completely mystified. In forty years of treating cows, he told me, he's never heard of this condition.

Oh great. Just what I wanted: to make veterinary history.

But he and another (local) vet suggested that I get hold a the largest syringe I can find, cut the sharp syringe part off, fit the body of the syringe over the teat, and use the plunger to create a reverse suction and try to draw out the teat that way. If nothing else, hopefully I can withdraw some of the milk that's making the quarter so turgid.

Trouble is, there were no such syringes locally.

I called our county seat (a 45 minute drive away) and found a vet's office that carried them, then called a neighbor who was in town and asked if she could stop and pick some up. Oops! She was in Coeur d'Alene for the day, not the county seat. Okay fine. I called the vet and canceled that order, then called around in Coeur d'Alene until I found some giganto syringes. Our neighbor kindly promised to pick them up for me.

In the afternoon a different neighbor stopped in to see the new calf and he pointed out something I had noticed but not realized the significance of: Thor had scours.

Scours is a stinky yellow diarrhea that can kill calves through dehydration within a day or two. Alarmed, Don and I rattled the internet searching for remedies and found that he apparently has a mild case. According to one website, "Calves that are scouring but remain bright and continue to suckle do not require treatment, however calves that are depressed and off the suck should be treated early to avoid calf losses and disease spread." Thor was certainly bouncing around the barn in bright spirits and nursing healthily. But we're keeping a sharp eye on him to make sure it doesn't get worse.

Meanwhile evening came and our neighbor still wasn't home with the syringes, but I needed to milk Matilda. As the daylight faded, I tied her head in the milking pen, but before I could block her in from behind she started backing out just far enough that I couldn't position her correctly to milk. She was distressed because her calf was out of sight. She was calm and unalarmed this morning when I milked her, but I guess the descending nightfall triggered her concern because she was fighting the tie and thrashing around.

Okay fine. I enlisted Don's help, we located a tiny halter which we slipped on Thor, then hooked him up to a lead rope with the intent of tying him near mama's head to calm her down.

Let me tell you, calves hate to be pulled anywhere. Some instinct tells them to brace all four little hooves and resist. So Thor resisted. And resisted. And resisted. We kind of half-carried, half-dragged him near Matilda's head and tied him in place. You'd think we were torturing him.

But at least Matilda relaxed. Relaxed yes, but wouldn't move forward the step or two we needed to lock her in the milking pen. (Are we having fun yet?) It was getting dark and just then a car drove up our driveway. Our neighbor with the syringes please please please? No, it was Maid Elizabeth, the big sister of our friend Miss Calamity (who was visiting) come to pick Miss C. up and bring her home for dinner. So Maid Elizabeth got to see us in all our pushing, shoving, muddy, poopy glory.

While Don tugged Matilda's halter, Maid Elizabeth helped me shove her from behind until she took those two critical steps forward. I was able to get her locked into the milking pen, tie her back leg (so I wouldn't get kicked), and milk. But of course that back quarter teat was still totally inverted and I couldn't get anything out of it.

Meanwhile Thor, who was still not pleased to be dragged where he didn't want to go, backed into me and spread stinky yellow diarrhea all over the back of my shirt. (Are we having fun yet?) Nothing I could do about it, Don and I were already covered with mud and worse.

We finished milking and released all the animals back into the pen with fresh food and water. Don went back inside while I closed up the chicken coop and realized two chickens were missing. Sigh. (Happens almost every night.) I went and found a flashlight and searched their usual haunts and found them easily enough. I was able to catch one, but the other hen, loopy in the darkness, went on a befuddled chase around the barn until she finally found her way out and into the coop. I buttoned up the chickens and came into the house in a merry temper.

The house was a sty (which normally wouldn't bother me except I always get wound up tight as a drum whenever milking issues happen) so the kids scurried around putting things to rights while I tackled the kitchen.

Then I went up to check my email and found a little love-note from Don with a link to a Swedish a capella men's quintet. (I love a capella music.) Aww. (Sniffle.) I sure do love this guy. He knows how to unkink my knots.

So to everyone who ever fantasizes about the ease and simplicity of country living, I hope this post corrects some misconceptions. It's not just gathering warm eggs and seeing baby calves being born. It's also about mastitis and cranky cows, stinky yellow diarrhea and mysterious teat conditions that baffle experienced vets.

But most of all, it's about a spouse who loves you enough to send you love notes when you need them. Because let me tell you, country living requires teamwork.

Thor pix

Well, it looks like the new calf's name is officially Thor. I wasn't crazy about it at first but it's kinda grown on me.

Thor is beautiful! Big doe eyes and dun or brown fur, not the reddish brindle coat that his older sister Pearly has.

Calves are so durn cute at this age. It's hard to resist taking too many pictures.

Despite Matilda's low-hanging udder, he's a healthy nurser. (Notice the bloody flux that stains the back of Matilda's bag, dribbling down from her vulva. Just the natural after-effects of birth. It will dry up and flake off in the next couple days.)

But - look closely above and to the right of Thor and you'll notice a nasty gash on Matilda's udder. (Sorry this photo is so blurry.)

It looks like she tore it on a nail or something. Must hurt like the dickens! I searched the barn and didn't see any obviously protruding nails, so who can say how she got it. At any rate I'm keeping a tube of triple-antibiotic ointment in the barn and I'm slathering it two or three times a day to keep the wound from getting infected.

Notice how Matilda is nuzzling Thor's bottom while he's nursing?

It seems revolting, but it is very typical behavior of a cow to vigorously lick her calf's bottom while it's nursing. It encourages a calf to deficate. Hey, whatever works I guess.

When we checked on Thor late yesterday evening, we actually found him half-covered with hay. This was the best thing that could be - hay is a superb insulator for farm animals. We actually totally covered him with hay before leaving the barn for the night - it was cold outside, and this meant little Thor (with a belly full of warm milk and a blanket of hay over him) was as snug as a calf could be.