A very bad day: Mastitis!

[carragheendexters]

Ouch, I bet that was painful, a "quadruple mastectomy" LOL. The wound would be massive.

Hmmm, maybe it is just my vet that won't do them. Perhaps in our circumstances it is too risky, surgery is all done in the paddock or the crush. We don't have large animal facilities such as proper theatres and surgical teams, or even anything indoors, everything is done outside. I have had a Caesar done on a Jersey tied up to a fence post, her uterus torsed. The vet didn't want her in the crush in case she went down, just under sedation and a nerve block. Amazingly she did really well and went on to have healthy calves

He does remove gangrenous quarters, just not those with a healthy blood supply.

I didn't know you can use silver nitrate. I know sometimes they use chlorhexidine, but my vet prefers formalin, he didn't say why.

With my cow, I would love to amputate the quarter, she has such issues with it when lactating, and she is a heavy milker, and the problem quarter seems to produce more than the other 3. I don't think that killing it will do as well for her.

Holly, I just have to ask the question, what do you do with a cow without an udder? Just wondering.

regards Louise

[hollydzie]

Louise, I know it does seem weird a cow with no udder. I am sure that it was removed at a clinic not at the farm. Like Sheri with her ewe, this was a very nice cow, so they have bred her and they will bottle feed the calf.

I have never had any personal experience with mastitis and I hope I never do. I wonder if you are more likely to have mastitis if you milk your cows. I don't do that either LOL...

[zephyrhillsusan]

Hi all, I haven't been on here in a few days. We've been having our kitchen cabinets refaced, and everything was out of the cabinets and drawers, paper taped over everything, plastic draped from the ceiling, spraying going on, big exhaust blower running, and air compressor for sprayer. It's been a crazy week! But here's the news on Siobhan . . .

She finished her Pirsue on March 4. Her Excede was done for that day or the next. The CMT still showed strong +, but my new vet called to see how she was and told me not to worry, that all the WBC's responding to the infection show as a high SCC. The milk is coming out clear as far as I can tell, and the lump is definitely smaller or gone, although the remaining mammary tissue feels hardish to me compared to the other quarters, so she probably has scar tissue. The last CMT was faintly +, so that's an improvement. Now I'm just waiting for the AB residue to be gone so I can retest. I'll get a test on Monday and mail it to TQML. There's a lab closer that would test for Staph, but they can't do sensitivity. If it should still be positive, I need a sensitivity done; the vet told me to ask them to do Gentamycin, which they usually don't do, but he said should knock it out if the Pirsue didn't. I'll be sure to let you know when I have the test results back. Just hoping and praying at this stage, still milking daily, getting her milked out. Here's a post I did about the whole mastitis treatment process.

She's been wearing her weaning halter that I made.  There's a photo of it in the above post.  Then one day she came in, and I was suspicious that she had sucked on the quarter behind the affected one, both on the left.  So I got my trusty red gel food coloring (and no, it will never go back in the kitchen!!!) and put a bit just on the tip of the affected teat.  Sure enough, the next day the food coloring was smeared and was also on the rear teat.  I was SO dismayed!     (But there's no sad enough face to show how I felt!)  I spent the whole time milking just talking myself into a state of determination vs. depression.  I decided I'm definitely more stubborn than her and hopefully smarter!     I realized that the plastic on my weaning halter was too flexible, and she must have been bending it backwards, the stinker!  I was desperate enough to brave getting out DH's jigsaw, the first time I have ever used any kind of electric saw.  I sawed up a plastic crate I found because it was full of handy air holes, and I bolted it to the bottom of her halter.  It looked rather like a medieval torture device, and she was not happy with me.  But it worked for overnight because she came in with more milk in both quarters.  I'll be doing a post about that and you can see that there's no way she could ever have nursed with that thing on!  She could eat, though, which I determined before I left her for the night.

Meanwhile, I spent the night researching online, actually stayed up till 2 am (yawn!) and finally found what I thought was the answer.  I'll do a post tomorrow with plenty of photos, but I want to give it 24 hours to see if it actually works.  Let me just say that if any of you are riders and have ever longed a horse with a surcingle and long reins, you know exactly what I did.  My Dressage Dexter!     Siobhan was NOT happy at getting it put on, but I think she's thrilled to have the medieval torture device off her halter, and once I turned her lose she seemed to act as if she wasn't wearing anything at all.  I'm not happy about having a cow out in a pasture wearing this get-up since it's made to be used under human supervision in a riding ring.  However, considering the alternative for her, I guess it's worth the risk.  When I actually got it on her and could see that it loooooked like it would work, I felt a 100-lb weight lift from my heart!  Once again, hoping and praying . . .

Louise, my new vet actually removed a quarter from one of his cows, too.  She got a teat stepped on and ripped and kept getting mastitis, so he finally removed the quarter.  Not my preference, but killing it doesn't sound nice, either!  And no, I'm sure there is no breaking her of this habit.  She will be wearing her surcingle for life.  The good thing about it is that it won't interfere with her licking and mothering a calf like the weaning halter or a weaning ring would.  All she won't be able to do, perhaps, is turn around and lick it while it's nursing.  Not sure I want to give her that much latitude!  I have thought of Bitter Apple or something similar, and also thought of alum, which my mom used to use in pickles and tastes HORRIBLE!  I would use cayenne, but afraid to burn her udder.  I know some KFC people use cayenne for edema or mastitis, but Siobhan went crazy with the BenGay so I can't imagine what cayenne would do!  I need to look for alum on Amazon, but up till now have been busy just trying to create a barrier to stop her.  (And get my kitchen back together!)

Don't worry, I'm not giving up on her, not for self-sucking nor for Staph A.  It sounds like my new vet has a plan if she still has it, but please, oh, please, oh, please let it be gone!!!  Not to mention, she needs to be dried up now!

Thank you all for checking in.  I'll keep you posted.

[zephyrhillsusan]

Okay, y'all, you can get the promised update on the self-sucking in this thread under The Dexter Cow.