One September Thursday afternoon I got call to see a troubled cow.

She was down on the yard groaning and extremely bloated. Bloated to the point I thought that this animal was going to die of bloat before my very eyes. So my priority was to let the gas out of the rumen before I did anything else. So, after checking with a needle that it was free gas (the needle hissed continuously, which confirmed this)  I put a little local anesthetic in and got a red plastic trocar and screwed it into the rumen. this did a great job of releasing the gas from the rumen. But she still looked terrible.

Next, I thought I better figure out why she wasn't burping. I did a general exam, which did not turn up much. She was still yet to calve, with a due date about 5 days later. My exam confirmed she was still in calf and the calf was still alive. I then put a stomach tube down her throat thinking that that might tell me if there was a blockage there. I managed to get the stomach tube all the way down, showing there was no bloakage.  But she really did not like it, rolling over and groaning as I did. But now I was confident her throat was not blocked, but I was still very puzzled by her.

I stood back and looked at her, she was down and bloated and looking miserable. It occurred to me that all her symptoms could be explained by low calcium (milk fever). But I had never seen bloat so extreme with milk fever before, and she was still days from calving.

All the same I thought it was worth trying a bag of calcium. So, I got a bag and found her vein and started infusing calcium into her. She immediately started to look better and by the end of the bag was looking so much better and healthier.

She got up not long after I left the farm and calved a healthy calf a few days later.

This farm happens to have Cow Manager wearables, so we were able to see her activity the day around that time. What was noticeably is on the Wednesday, (the day before) she did not eat at all or have much movement. So clearly she wasn't felling well and did not eat. Not eating during the critical transition time then tipped her in milk fever, even though she still had not calved yet.

So, a successful outcome to possibly the strangest milk fever I have ever seen.