Texas Equine Veterinary Association

www.texasequineva.com • 31 CAN YOU PUT THIS BACK IN FOR ME? by Bo Brock, DVM, DABVP The cowboy had a strange look on his face as I walked toward the trailer that contained his stricken cow. I had known this fella for years and didn't recall ever seeing him with such a perplexed look on his face. The phone call an hour ago was a short one. He simply told me he had a uterus on one of his cows he needed put back in and asked if I would mind meeting him at the clinic. I had replaced many a prolapsed uterus for the gentleman and couldn't imagine what would cause such a strange look on his face. It is a fairly long walk from the back of the clinic to the unloading alley and I had a minute on the stroll over to evaluate the situation. The cow stood facing me in the trailer and it almost appeared as if she had a perplexed look on her face too. Hmmmmm, what would cause an old cowboy and his cow to both have an oddly perplexed look on their faces? As I got a closer, the cow turned a bit and I could see her back side better...another hmmmm...no prolapse. I shook the cowboy's hand as I continued to study his face and wondered what had become of the prolapse. If you have never seen one of these things, it reminds me a moist pink stay puff marshmallow man with knobs on it. Once that uterus falls out the back of a cow, it takes an act of congress to get it poked back in. I have wrestled for hour upon hour and there is almost no way it sucked back in on its own during the trailer ride. "What happened to the prolapse Tom? I have never seen one of those prolapses go back in on its own. And why do you have such an odd look on your face?" I asked with a tone I felt appropriate the randomness of the situation. "Well that is just it doc. When I called I asked you to meet me here to put a uterus back in, not a prolapse." Now I was the one with a puzzled look on my face. Tom left his statement hanging in the air way too long with no further explanation. He just kinda stood there looking at me like I was supposed to understand what his two-sentence comment meant. Finally he realized I was lost and began explaining what had occurred. "Well doc, seems this ole cow had a young'un this afternoon and she spilled her uterus. You know what I am talking about, you and I have fixed a many of 'em together. But this cow was way out in the back side of the Smith pasture, and we had to rope her to get her in the trailer. Well, Dave got the calf and I took out after the cow. She was running purty fast and the terrain was purty rough. I guess I got my loop a little too big and somehow, during all the commotion, I didn't get my slacked pulled out fast enough and my loop sucked down in time, and all I got was that big ole uterus as she went through. Well, I didn't really realize it until it was too late, and I pulled the whole uterus off in one piece. But I put it in a feed sack and thought maybe you could put it back on." Now it was me with the puzzled look. We got the cow out and put her in the chute. Some how he had cinched that rope down tight enough around the base of that uterus that it ligated those vessels with either friction heat or constriction and she wasn't even bleeding at all. To a cowboy, a feed sack is a sterile environment. Tom had seen one of his roping buddies get his thumb pulled off and they put the thumb in a feed sack, took him to the hospital, and they sewed it back on. Now he assumed I was going to be able to do the same thing with a 40-pound uterus...NO, that wasn't going to happen. The cow, amazingly, lived. And of course, just to be turds, they ran her through the working chute that fall while I was palpating for pregnancy just to see if I would call her bred. Thank God I said she was open.

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