Calving call

I am on call this weekend and I had an interesting call tonight. A rancher called and said he needed help getting a calf out. The cow must have aborted and the calf was 2 weeks early and he didn't think it was still alive. I drove out through the really thick fog (visibility 10 yards) and he had the cow caught up in the barn. I put on my boots and coveralls and took a feel. I was a bit confused at what I felt inside. I spent some time getting oriented and the rancher was waiting for me to tell him what was wrong and what to do next.

I told him it feels like the cow is going to give birth to a basketball, thats just how it felt. This calf had a head as big as a basketball and a very wide and incomplete skull filled with fluid. I put ob chains on the front legs which were very short, small and stumpy. I drained a lot of fluid out of the head and we yanked it right out. It was a deformed fetus, really an interesting case. I cut open where all the fluid was in the skull and found there was no brain or spinal cord material, none at all, just an open empty skull.

I was explaining to the owners how it might have happened and things were pretty serious when I told them there are really only 2 causes of this. One was from a plant toxicity and the other was the HC syndrome. They were wondering what the HC syndrome was and I said, well, the only other demonstrated case of something born with no brain was named the HC syndrome, or the Hilary Clinton syndrome. I was hoping the 3 of them weren't HC supporters & democrats, and they for sure weren't and we all got a good laugh out of it. Life is fun.