Our Battle with Bovine Ketosis
As most of you know, I decided 2 years ago to get a bottle calf instead of a proven milk cow. At the time we needed something to eat down our overgrown pastures, and my thought was getting her young would buy me some time to learn and bond with her. In the last two years, I have read tons of books, joined every Facebook group, made as many local connections as I could, and watched too many youtube videos all in preparation for her calving. My understanding was that first-time heifers didn't typically get milk fever, but that was the biggest issue I needed to watch out for. I spent way too much money and bought everything I could think of in preparation for the off chance I won the lotto and she went down with it her first time.
Turns out that wasn’t what I needed to be worried about, she went down 2 weeks after calving with ketosis, and in all honesty, it probably started sooner I just missed all the signs in my inexperience. I get down on myself a little about it but here's the important thing, I will never make that mistake again. I have learned so much through this experience and I felt sharing might be of help to others. When cows go ketonic they stop eating, I attributed her lack of appetite to just having calved which wasn’t the case. As soon as I noticed something was off I called the vet out, we took a urine sample to test for both milk fever and ketosis. The test showed she had a high level of ketones. If a cow goes down with ketosis typically they are given an IV drip of dextrose to bring them out of it, but I caught it early and she was still on her feet so we decided to treat it with 10 days of propylene glycol drench instead.
I bought a blood meter to get a better reading on her ketones and pulled blood from her tail vein 2 times a day to make sure her levels were going down. Within a couple of days, she went from 8 mmol/L to around 1 mmol/L, and there she stayed. I should also mention by this point she was only producing enough milk for her calf and if I tried to milk her at all her ketone levels shot up. She started acting extremely depressed, she no longer got excited to see me, she started to fight being haltered and walked, and she didn't care if I picked up and moved her calf. She also developed a horrible smelling breath, I can only compare it to acetone. She continued to barely eat, every once in a while she would nibble but not enough. One of the things I learned during this time was that cows NEED to eat their way out of ketosis, but ketosis makes them not want to eat so it’s a vicious cycle.
After a week I called the vet back out, I was frustrated and at a complete loss at what to do. We sent off 4 vials of blood to a local lab and had them run a full panel, all of which came back normal. I started giving twice-daily injections of vitamin b complex to stimulate her appetite and probiotic paste every morning to help rebalance her rumen. I spent hundreds of dollars at the feed store buying every type of feed and hay they offered hoping she would find something palatable, but still nothing work.
A week later the vet came out again, and she said when ketosis lasts this long it's usually predicated by something else. At this point, Buttercup had lost a significant amount of weight and I was pretty sure we were going to lose her. The vet did another full physical, we palpated her to check for metritis which she didn’t have and we checked her rumen again for a displaced abomasum (DA). Since the beginning, we suspected she had DA, but when they have it you can hear a very distinct ping and in all of her exams she wasn’t pinging. That day my vet was able to hear a very faint ping, so she suggested it was time to take her into UC Davis for surgery.
I called them made an appointment for the next morning, located a horse trailer to transport her and her calf, and started on the hour-long drive. On the way there she went down, she had never been in a trailer before and the stress from the drive coupled with her lack of eating was too much and she crashed. Once we got to UCD 4 people helped me carry/drag her off the trailer, and into a rehabilitation stall. They got her on IV fluids, asked me to take the calf home since she couldn’t stand to feed, and sent me on the way with the promise to update me later that night. When they called with the update, I found out she had recovered and was back on her feet. They said I could bring the calf back the following morning, but they also had bad news they couldn’t locate the ping for the DA and weren't sure what was wrong with her. They wanted to give her some time being in a stable condition before doing too much, so they planned to wait until morning for the ultrasound.
The next morning I drove back up UCD to drop the calf off, and the vet came out to talk to me. She said the ultrasound showed a floating DA which explained the lack of a ping. It would twist sometimes and a ping could be heard then it would twist back and she would be fine, no ping which is what made it so hard to diagnose. They wanted to go ahead and do the DA surgery and assured me it would be very routine. They explained that once she had this surgery I wouldn't ever need to worry about her getting another DA. They called me after saying the surgery went well, and she was already eating again and the calf was nursing. I was able to pick her up the following morning, so I made my third and final trip to UCD to load her up. Since coming home 4 days ago she is almost back to her normal self, eating, drinking, and her depression is completely gone. We are giving her another week before starting to push her milk production, but even if she doesn’t have a high production this round I’m going to call her survival a win.
This post makes it sound like it was a battle I fought alone with the vet, but that wasn’t the case. It truly took a village, so I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who helped me. Before the vet could show up Allison from Gebruder farm loaned me their entire dairy cow medical kit in case I needed something I didn’t have. In that kit were the test strips that diagnosed the ketosis, and the propylene glycol we used to treat her. When she needed to be transported to UCD and I was completely panicked because I didn’t have a horse trailer or know how to drive one. Denise from Marybelle Farms offered to let me borrow hers. She even drove it over, backed it into place, and hooked it up to my truck to make it easier for me. When I brought the calf home that first night and I didn't have anything to feed her, Kassandra from Mountain Lake Cattle told me to come over because she had me covered. And lastly, when I dropped Buttercup off at UCD my mom stopped by to check on her every couple of hours sending me pictures and videos and keeping her calm with a familiar face. I feel very fortunate to be surrounded by so many amazing and caring people.