(Feb 5) We started working with the vet here in Embu, Dr. Francis Kathuri. He graduated in 1993 from the Nairobi vet school. He has lots of practical experience, which was obvious right from the start, having lots of confidence. He has also had students with him before, and taken a facilitator course before, so he was familiar with the teaching and learning process to guide the students toward the right diagnosis and treatment and prevention. He gave me a chance to relax a bit because I was no longer on the "hot seat" all the time to "direct" the students. We pooled out knowledge and experience to try to come up with the best answers to the following problems (sorry for the technical jargon!). We had a cow that had blind teat cisterns in 2 quarters, and so Francis opened them up with a sterilized wire (not medical grade, just a wire, but it seemed to worked, at least temporarily, getting milk into the teat cistern). Then, he put in a long sterile teat cannula into where the hole where the wire was made in order to prevent it from healing shut again. I haven’t seen anyone do this before, but he says that he has done this successfully before. I look forward to seeing how well this actually works. This is a genetic trait though, so the cow should not get bred again. In Canada, that problem would usually require a costly surgery and implant. In Kenya, necessity is the mother of invention. We also saw a couple of cases of anaplasmosis (a blood parasite spread by ticks that we don’t get in Canada) that was very interesting to the students.
Today (Feb 6), we were joined by three more vet students in their final year at the Nairobi vet school (Sam, Mac and Evelyn). They were very happy to join us because they get limited hands-on practical experience in their curriculum. And what a day we had for them. We had another two cases of anaplasmosis today, so they didn’t miss out on the cases yesterday. We saw a 7-8 year old down cow, which went down prior to calving last week. She was likely low in calcium and glucose. She was induced to calf successfully and treated for her low calcium and glucose. However, she was still down today. She had pressure sores, but was still eating, and had no mastitis. In Canada, a cow like this would be lifted by a tractor in a sling, or put into a "cow swimming pool" to assist her to rise, and then
give her legs some exercise. However, this is Kenya and so we improvised again. What is ample here is labour. So 8 young men came to the farm, and with ropes and empty feed bags, they literally lifted this cow up, and " walked" her to a new softer grassy area in the shade. Now that is a novel way to "walk your cow". And it did seem to help her because she started using her legs a bit. And when we set her down, she sat up straight (with some sand bags supporting her side) and started eating grass. We shall see if she gets up on her own. She was very sore from being down for a few days.The final case of the day was a "great learning case" for everyone, including Francis, a heifer with a uterine torsion. This is something that every cow vet student should see before graduating, and so the students were ecstatic. She started appearing to calf on Saturday, but stopped and didn’t do anything since then, and today was Tuesday. I wondered if it was a torsion. We rolled the cow, while I held onto the calf and uterus, so that the rest of the cow would "catch up" to the rest of the twisted calf in the uterus. Again, with lots of muscle help, we needed to roll her twice, each time untwisting it a bit. That was not the end of the problem though, as I had to use an improvised calf snare (a piece of clean rope – improvisation is a useful skill here) to pull up the "turned back head" through the cervix so that the calf could come out. It was a tight fit getting this 80 lb calf out of this 700 lb heifer but we made it, and the heifer was fine afterwards. We tried to convince Simon (our driver) that we deserved some ice cream for our hard work, but we’re still waiting. Maybe tomorrow! (PS. We got the ice cream!)
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