So....cows. I love cows. I grew up with cows. Cows are great.
But sometimes cows are not so nice.
Right now I'm dealing with rabies post-exposure vaccines because I saw a cow that I suspected had rabies this past Wednesday and in order to confirm that, her brain had to be tested. In order for her brain to be tested, her brain had to be removed from her body. I cut myself while removing the head and now feel like I've been run over by a truck because of a reaction to the vaccine. And I get another one on Monday. Oh, joy.
This picture represents another time when I felt like I got run over by a truck - I got run over by a cow! Funny story.....
I was called to a farm about an hour away that I had never been to. The call was for a cow that had a prolapse (I'll leave it to you that want to know more to google that one.) Since I did not know what sort of handling facilities the farm had, I took along my dart gun.
When I arrived, I was met by a very nice farm hand who told me that the cow was a Jersey cow. Jerseys are small little dairy cows known for their calm temperament. He told me she was mean. I laughed a little. He told me that they bought her to be a nurse cow to calves who lost their mom in their large beef herd. She had not raised a single calf and had really been nothing but trouble.
There was a small fenced in paddock on the back side of the barn. There was a large gate on the side of the paddock we shall call gate # 1. After entering the paddock, I had to cross over a large gate to enter the barn - this was gate # 2. Once inside the barn, I was standing in a small area with another gate separating me from the cow. This was gate # 3. The area the cow was in had a doorway that led outside of the barn into a runway with a chute. All we needed to do was move the cow through the doorway and we would have her caught so I could work on her. I had one of my techs with me and we waited outside out of sight so the farm hand could move the cow out.
After several minutes of him yelling at her with no success in moving her, I decided to try to help him. Cows will often move away from strangers more-so than they will people they know and trust.
I went to the back of the barn, crossed gate # 1 into the paddock, crossed gate # 2 into the barn, and then crossed gate # 3 to be in the same pen with the cow. I yelled at her a bit, never touched her, and as soon as she turned her head and saw me - she came after me!
This is not normal cow behavior. They normally warn you before they charge you. They stomp their feet or blow hard out their nose. But not this little Jersey! She charged me quick as a wink.
I jumped gate #3 - and so did she! She was seriously wanting to 'get in my pocket' as Dr. B was prone to saying. I jumped gate #2 and continued out the paddock and cleared gate # 1. She stopped chasing after her first gate jump and was still contained in the barn behind gate # 2.
Wowzers! The farm hand looked at me and said "I told you she was mean!"
I decided to try sedating her. I loaded a syringe with a sedative and had the farm hand get me a bucket of feed.
If you were standing at the back of the barn at gate #2 looking to the front of the barn where the doorway is, you would see a solid wall on the right side. On the left, there was a feed bunk platform about 4 feet off the ground with bales of hay forming a wall to the left beside it. The feed bunk itself was approximately 2 feet wide. I decided to stand in the feed bunk and try to feed the cow. Once her head was in the bucket, I would pop her in the neck with the needle. Being elevated from the ground, I felt pretty safe.
I approached her, held out the feed bucket, and the darn cow came up into the feed bunk after me! I was unfortunately standing right in front of the post that gate # 3 was attached to and she butted me into the post pretty hard. The bruise in the picture above was given to my right thigh by her head. I had a smaller one on my left thigh from the post.
My saving grace is that as she came after me, she got stuck around that post. Her front legs were on one side and her back legs on the other (this is really hard to describe!) and she was stuck with her belly in the feed bunk.
I tied a halter on her (that was fun!) and had to figure out what to do. I did not want to sedate her in that position because then she would be even more stuck. So, I had to get my shocker and really 'motivate' her to get her loose. Once she was loose, she came through gate #2 after my vet tech and almost came after her over gate # 1 - but she didn't.
She was now outside in the paddock. And it started to rain. Great.
I used the dart gun to sedate her and tied her to a post and fixed her problem. And I informed the farm hand that I would highly recommend selling her. He agreed.
Nice bruise. Not nice Jersey cow.
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