Calving calls

Ranchers will tell you this time of year is calving season. Most of the births happen without having to get a veterinarian involved, but sometimes it is necessary to get help and Carbon County has a vet ready to help.

Warner McFarland has been a veterinarian in Carbon County for over 20 years.

He attended Carroll College in Helena, Mont. where he earned his B.S. in Biology. In 1993 he graduated from Colorado State University's College of Veterinary Medicine. McFarland holds licenses to practice veterinary medicine in Wyoming and Colorado. After veterinary school, and a quick time as a vet in Bozeman, Mont., in 1994 he joined the Rawlins Veterinary Clinic as an associate.

In 1995, he and his wife, Amy, purchased the practice and have been helping Carbon County residents with their animals ever since.

McFarland said most ranchers call him to get his take if there is difficult birth on the horizon, but don't actually make him come out.

McFarland said, traditionally, mid-March is the ideal time for calving because the day length starts to get longer, the weather warmer (at least it is hoped) and that means green grass will soon be springing forth.

"It is sort of what the industry leans to," McFarland said. "You calve in the spring and sell in the fall."

He said that living in Carbon County afforded him clients that are proficient at calving out.

"The only time we get called is when there is some sort of a problem that is referred to as dystocia," McFarland said. "It refers to an animal having a difficult birth."

He said sometimes it requires a C-section to get a calf out. Other examples are a twisted uterus that the vet untwists, or a breach birth that has the calf coming out tail first.

In a breach birth, the calf is manipulated to come out the correct way.

"Once calving season gets rolling, I will get 12 to 20 phone calls a week," McFarland said. "But as far as actually having to go out to a ranch, it varies year to year, but as calving gets into full swing, we might perform, on average, three to four C-sections a week."

He said it can be more intense

"There have been instances where I am doing three to four C-sections a day," McFarland said.

The vet said when he did go out on call to do a C-section, the animal was usually in a stall standing up.

"They are in the cow chute and we do an epidural and then we do a line block so that you make a straight line down where you know you are going to make your incision on the abdominal wall which is on the left," McFarland said. "And once we make our incision into the abdominal cavity, we reach in and grab the leg of the calf in the uterus and pull it up, make an incision in the uterus, take the calf out and then sew everything back up."

He said occasionally an animal is out in the field and he must improvise.

"There is always that situation that sticks out in your mind," McFarland said. "The ones that are out in the field are a bit more challenging. There have been occasions that I have been in a snowstorm and I have the cow lying on its side with its legs literally tied to bumpers of trucks that are out there with me."

He said it gets tough doing the C-section by truck light or by a flashlight.

"It is always gratifying when you get a live calf out of those situations," McFarland said. "There have been times when I thought, 'this will never work and the heifer is going to get an infection in there,' but given a little time and some antibiotics, they do pretty well."

McFarland said wind can also be a problem. He remembers being at a ranch where the heifer was in a sheep corral. A heifer is a female animal that has never had a calf. Once a heifer has a calf, she becomes a cow.

"We had her tied down and the wind was just howling and dung was flying everywhere," McFarland said. "We did the C-section and dung was getting on the uterus. I kept flushing it out as best as I could, but I really thought it was going to die. It was gratifying when I found out she lived."

McFarland summed up his appreciation of calving season.

"It is always a lot of fun when calving, lambing and kidding really gets started, because it is really a lot of fun to have all these little babies running around," McFarland said. "But by the time we get to the end of the season, we are glad its over."