You okay, doc?
I just need to defrost these chains in my bucket.
There’s coffee in the house. Do you drink coffee?
Thanks but how about we get this calf out first?
That was me with a farmer in his unheated calving pen on New Year’s Day. When I arrived at the farm my vet truck read about -21F outside (-30C), and I was having trouble preventing my wet hands and bare arms from sticking – to the calving chains, the gate, my bucket of rapidly cooling water, my coat zipper, and basically anything else made of metal. I wasn’t having much luck with the calf either.
Two hours and a miserable calving later, I was finally back in the truck wearing all the layers I had brought and shivering so much I could barely fit the key into the ignition. I’d given up washing the calving equipment on farm because my hands refused to function, and had pretty much thrown everything covered in frozen cow feces/amniotic fluid/blood/placenta into the Bowie unit. I had attempted in vain to scrub my boots and greens, which were now frozen solid to my legs and torso.
But as I drove back to the clinic with the heat on at full blast and sensation slowly returning to my toes, I figured, it could have been worse. At least I didn’t get our 2-wheel drive truck stuck in the deep snow and have to be pulled out with a tractor. At least it wasn’t 3 am in the morning. At least the drugs I needed to use in my grip were still in liquid state (for future reference – gentamicin, xylazine, and a Simplex soaked in Novalsan all freeze at higher temperatures than Banamine and oxytocin). At least I got the calf out and the cow was still standing and eating when I left. And, at least, the sun is finally shining and it is frigidly beautiful outside.
Yes. Even in 4 feet of snow and temperatures cold enough to freeze nostril hairs, it is still good to be living the Herriot dream.
