split pelvis operation

2-08-2012- split pelvis operation 

         well folks if you thought you were going to see the blood, the guts, and gore , it isn't happening. it was just the vet and myself again as another cow was having trouble calving when the vet comes up with yet another solution to the problem of exiting the calf with minimal stress to the cow and to the calf. 

         he had told me he did it successfully a couple of times and cows actually regained their strength and had less chance of infection and less stress on the calf. he inserted his hand into her birth canal and checked the size of the calf as i had done before calling him. it was a big calf and had feet like a cow. we knew this was going to be trouble if we didn't do something to ease the birth.

      he says " we can do a split pelvis operation as it is quite easy to do and requires an incision below the tip off the vulva and and cut through the muscle till you get to he pelvic bone. then you take a ball bat and chisel and smack the pelvic bone square in the middle and it has to be square as it has a natural line it will crack on. essentially separating the pelvic bone allowing the calf to exit through the birth canal " 

      i said go for it you are the doc. this vet had a confident way about him and cared for the animal and did all he could to alleviate the pain. first he gave her a mild sedative to lay her down and then did a spinal tap to block the pain in her rear-end. we washed and disinfected the entire area and trimmed around her privates with a razor and disinfected again. she was laying on clean straw and had good footing in case she needed to stand later. he made a 3 inch incision directly below her vulva and cut in at least 3/4 of an inch deep in the tissue until he was on top of the pelvic bone. he reaches in his medical bag and sure enough has a ball bat that had been shortened and still had louisville logo on it , and a 2 inch wide wood chisel . he aligns the wood chisel up and and has me hold it . then he hauls off and smacks the head of the wood chisel and you can hear the thud it makes . the cow hardly flinches . 

      we then check to see if indeed it did break the bone and after inserting a gloved hand finger deep into incision he confirmed that it appeared to be broken. the vet gets out his chains and handles and and slips a chain over the front leg of the calf first on on side ,then the other. and this is all done with the calf still in the cow . we start the calf into the birth canal and the cow begins to help and soon we have a head appear out of the birth canal and the calf is already starting to breath and  she just plops right out with hardly an effort once the head was through. we weighed the calf as we did all and it was our heaviest calf to date at 104 lbs.. it was huge and healthy. 

     i had never seen this operation before or since as we have angus now and less calving problems .i just think that in an effort to establish the simmental breed they went a little overboard trying to push the purebred status on regular cows. they just were not bred for it. havent heard to much about the simmental breed for awhile. and every once in awhile will show up in judging at a county fair or state fair. we had a lot of calves die for several reasons while working there and we made every effort to try and save as much as we could. even working with the vet and taking calves to reynoldsburg to be autopsied at the states research lab there for infectious diseases. i think it had a lot to do with the intense conditons the cows were kept in . to much confinement and to much of a chance for disease to run rampant there. and it was pretty much what the autopsies showed that it was a combination of factors leading up to the calves deaths . most of this could have been avoided had the cows been allowed to run on pasture as opposed to being held in pens contaminated with manure and what ever else one might think.