Drama on the school camp

November 2 2015

The school campers have gone home now for the long weekend of the spring racing carnival and the rain has set in. The plants need it after the warm sunny week of the camp but right now I don’t.  Last Thursday Donna gave birth to a bull calf. She was up and walking round in the morning and the calf had been licked off but I had a sort of feeling that something was wrong. This turned out to be true. One of the young lads , who was especially good at stock work, checked her at lunchtime and found her collapsed under a tree looking very sick indeed.

The school group helped Edd get the calf up into the goat shed whilst I phoned around to try and get a vet. It was not easy to find anyone, but Yarra Glen sent up a young woman who turned out to be a godsend. By the time she arrived the cow had a huge prolapse but Edd and a teacher had managed to get her supported in a better position and the kids had fetched straw bales to prop her up and water.

The vet organised everyone into a working team and we gave the cow calcium and magnesium into a vein and then subcutaneously. The teacher then supported the mass of bloody matter that had fallen out and the vet slowly started the difficult job of stuffing everything back inside the cow.  She has since admitted that she could not have done this without the help. The amazing thing is that whilst struggling to do this she also talked to the school group and explained everything.

The first effort failed when the cow moved unexpectedly. She is so heavy that I was knocked flying off the bale I was sitting on trying to hold her head up. The second try was more successful and the vet used tape to stitch the cow back together. The teacher and I helped press against Donnas skin to hold it all in place whilst the vet gave her a second injection to stop her pushing. Donna was then given antibiotics and we just had to leave her to try and recover. Luckily she had enough strength to get onto her feet and we could walk her slowly up to the yards.

The little calf was very weak and for the first day all I could do was force-feed him goats milk. Luckily he started sucking on Friday and by lunchtime we were able to put the cow in the bale and he started to feed from her.  This made a very happy ending for all the kids who had worked so hard to save them. Donna has not really accepted the calf but she allows it to feed from her twice a day in the bale whilst I milk out the extra four litres.

The next problem was to get the calf, Max, a shelter. We had an old stock crate outside Edd’s shed that was the right size so we moved it next to the yards and made a roof and protective wall from corrugated iron that the kids had salvaged from the old chook yards. A huge thunderstorm hit when we were doing this but we just kept working until we could get the Max under shelter in a bed of fresh straw. I towelled him down and then went down to the house to change my clothes because I was soaked to the skin.

The worst problem on the school camp could be blamed on an avocado. One poor girl cut her finger badly whilst chopping it for the evening meal and a teacher and I had to drive her to Maroondah hospital where we met her mum. She needed surgery to repair the damage so we had to manage the rest of the camp with out her. Everyone was most upset because she was such a good cook.