Special delivery

Special delivery

Nov. 18, 2000

It's The Pitts
By Lee Pitts

The process of bovine parturition is agonizing, painful and exhausting. At least that’s how it is for me; I have no idea how the cow feels about it. The reason that being midwife to a bunch of bovines is my least favorite chore is that I have no patience. I also have a knack for creating an emergency out of the simplest de-livery.

There are three stages to the birth-ing process. First there is the preparation. This involves wor-king myself into such a restless lather that I walk fences, my tailhead swells up and I can’t decide whether to stand or sprawl. This is a pretty good indication that a cow is ready to give birth somewhere. The normal procedure for my wife and I is to ride out to the heifer pasture in the truck and check on the heifers from afar by looking through binoculars. My wife insists that we do this so that I don’t upset the expectant moms. Now, on this particular day we immediately spied a heifer that immediately sent me into Stage One. The expectant mother had singled herself out and was acting in such a manner that caused me to become highly agitated. Immediately I was ready to bring her into the corral.

My wife calmly urged me to be cool and return to the house. She promised we would come back in an hour to check on the heifer’s progress. I did not understand how my wife could remain so calm in the midst of a disaster of such immense proportion!

Back at the house I tried to rest, placed cold compresses on my forehead and asked my wife what time it was every minute. A female can only stand so much of this and after 45 minutes she agreed to go with me to check on the heifer’s progress.

Stage Two of bovine parturition consists of straining and groaning and the distressed sounds emanating from me clearly indicated that we were in the Second Stage. The heifer did not appear comfortable either. I was immediately concerned that although she was obviously straining there was still no sign of feet or a water bag. I just knew I had a breech birth on my hands, or soon would have. We waited what seemed like three minutes before I informed my wife that I was going in.

To bring the heifer in I had to return to headquarters, catch my horse, Gentleman, and ride back out to the heifer pasture. (The key phrase being "catch my horse.") Despite the delay, Gentleman and I galloped to the aid of the heifer and drove her into in a broken down corral that was nearby. This was preferable to trailing the heifer all the way back to headquarters. Although there is no squeeze chute at the broken down corral, I had a unique way of wedging animals in a V between a fence and a gate. Despite the fact that the bellerin’ beast was on the prod and fighting my every move, I got her in the wedge, dismounted Gentleman and probed her birth canal. But I felt nothing. It was a ghost calf. I was fixing to explore further when the heifer suddenly broke through the fence as if it were made of cobwebs and held together by termites.

I asked the wife to call the vet for a c-section and said I would return with the heifer who was currently making dust as if her tail was on fire. (Which it probably felt like.) I gave chase and caught up with the beast in time to see her reunite with a new-born calf that evidently had been hiding in the bushes during my previous visit. I got down to breathe my pony and reconstruct the situation. The heifer must have calved, licked it clean and nursed it during the time I went to fetch my horse. When I saw it straining it must have been trying to clean. In retrospect, anybody could have made such a mistake!

This brings us to Stage Three of parturition which consists of mental and physical exhaustion, post partum blues and the need for sleep. But I could not rest for I had work to do. I had a set of corrals to rebuild and a story to fabricate to tell my wife and the vet who’d be arriving shortly.

Oh well; I guess that’s why they call it "labor."