Thats Life

Last night we did a ceasarian section on a cow, well the vet did it and Richard and I assisted, in my case mostly holding the light and other things.
The cow was due to give birth any time now but R was not happy with how she looked, just not right, so we had the vet have a look at her, the calf was dead, and had been for a couple of days, it was also breach, which is coming backwards.
We struggled for ages to try and deliver the calf but it was huge and eventually we all agreed it was not going to come out that way without damaging the cow seriously.
So we set to to do a section on her, lying down as we couldnt get her up, all the problems of a decaying calf and uterine contents, in the cowshed, in the dark with hand held lights.
Kate, the vet did a fantastic job, we flushed as much out as we could and carefully stitched her up, 4 layers.
We left the patient sitting up with a big bucket of water, some hay and chock full of antibiotics and painkillers. Richard then started milking at 7.30pm rather than the usual 4.30.

I was going to take some pictures of her stitches, which run for about 15 inches down her side, but Richard just came in and told me she is dead. She just put her head down and died.

So no calf, a huge vets bill and now we have to pay to have a dead cow taken away.

Sometimes I hate this job.