Treating a Ruptured Abscess! Not for the Squeamish!!

i've been out here working on my new round bell feeder and as i was doing that the cows were walking in to get a drink like they always do and i noticed that one of them walked in and she's got a problem that i can't ignore we need to do something about this right now it looks to me like she has an abscess on her side that blew out and what that means is basically it ruptured and i don't think it's drained all the way and it definitely needs to be cleaned up a little bit so we're going to get her in the chute and do those things to take care of her i'm going to warn you right now this isn't pretty this is not going to be a very pretty process so if you've got a weak stomach or you're a little bit squeamish i suggest that you just turn this one off because this ain't for you that's what we're doing today on farmer tyler ranch [Music] so i was able to get the gate closed on her before she went back out to pasture and you can tell that she's a little bit agitated because she's in here uh by herself mostly by herself the bulls in here and one of my steers is in here as well but she uh she wants to be back out with her friends so we're gonna try to catch her and get this done as soon as we can so we can get her feeling comfortable again and bully says i don't care what you guys are doing they don't concern me i left buddy my uh formal bottle calf steer in here with her because i know he's pretty tame and pretty calm and i was hoping that he might kind of settle her down a little bit it didn't really work too well but hey buddy you tried you did your best so we can turn you back out now huh you're a good boy you tried she's just high strung huh okay dear let's take this nice and easy hey turn around [Music] all right let's pull uh the side panel off of the chute here and get a better look at what we're dealing with [Applause] well as it so happens that that blowout is right about the same level as this pipe on the chute so it's going to be kind of hard to see i'll put a camera down in there to show you what it looks like and like i say another warning if you're squeamish get out get out now okay here you can see where it blew it's actually not uncommon for abscesses to blow out on their own like that and a lot of people will elect to drain them uh if they get too big that's definitely the way to go this one never really got that big abscesses you can't just go and pop them any old time you feel like it they kind of have to be ready so to speak so i figured i'd give it a couple days and it'd be ready to go well apparently this one was ready because she must have laid on it just right to make it rupture like that so really all that we can do now is clean it up the best we can we'll flush it out and i'm gonna pack some redmond clay on that that should really help for one keep the flies off of it but for two that's gonna help it heal up real nice right now i'm just trying to get anything that might be left in there we got to get it out and like i say it's not pretty but it's gotta be done like all that kind of stuff we don't want that in there [Music] [Music] there's a big one there all right i think i've got all the loose material out of the abscess itself so now we can go ahead and flush this out with iodine just kill any bacteria or anything that might have entered this while it was open so before a syringe would be ideal for this but i just don't happen to have one so we're going to try something a little different [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i like to get a good little bit in there um some might say that's wasteful but the way i look at it is that cow is worth a lot more to me than a bottle of iodine so if i gotta use the whole bottle on her then that's what i'll do okay now we'll just get us a little pinhole in the lid here so now what i'm to be able to do is when i squeeze that bottle it'll actually squirt up and i can get in there real good um just by the location of the abscess gravity's not really on my side but this is going to kind of cure that um [Music] i need to let this dry now before i can put the clay on there and while we're doing that i'm going to go ahead and give her some antibiotics now the whole i mean what an abscess is is a localized infection and the body just sort of encapsulates it so that it can't spread to the rest of the body since she has this open wound on her now um there's the chance that you know bacteria whatever could have gotten up in there so the antibiotics is just sort of an insurance policy she's not showing any signs of being sick or feeling bad she's actually it seems to have really good uh spirits and and that sort of thing but i'm going to give her the antibiotics anyway just to be on the safe side when you're given injections of anything you don't want to put more than 10 cc's or 10 milliliters at one site so we're giving her about 25 cc's so unfortunately that means three different shots for her ah what's this about you're so good for the other side you don't like me on this side let's make it quick then it's looking like the iodine is pretty well dried up i don't want to leave her locked in here long enough for it to be completely dry i think it's dry enough for the clay to stick to it so what i'm using here is this redmond clay uh it's first aid for horses but you know horses cows it'll work uh and and all it is is just hydrating clay so what this is gonna do is it's the main reason that i'm doing it is it's gonna keep the flies out of that they're not gonna be able to get into the abscess or into anywhere that they shouldn't be because we'll have this barrier of clay blocking them but this stuff is intended to be put on sores and open wounds which is exactly what this is so it'll keep the flies off and it's going to help her heal up um i might have to reapply it after a day or so but we'll just kind of keep an eye on her and see what it looks like so i just got a doll up here and we're just going to start packing it in and like i say she's really not standing see if i put my fingers in here [Music] [Music] that's looking pretty good to me the other nice thing about the clay is that it's very soothing i'm sure that's helping with her pain a little bit and i think we got her cleaned out uh physically as much as possible we got her washed out with water we got a flushed out with iodine we got you your shots we got you your clay i think you're ready to go back out in the field i was just getting all the gates ready to turn her loose and she got dancing around in the chute and that that gob of clay fell off of her so if it falls off in the chute it odds are would have just fallen off in the field so it's probably a good thing that it happened here now i know that i need to rig up some sort of bandage or you know something is to hold that in there so i think what i will do is go get an old t-shirt and cut a square out and then with some livestock adhesive i think is what it's called um we can kind of glue that patch on there and it'll hold the clay in place the nice thing about that is since the t-shirt fabric is so porous that that will still be able to drain i think and it'll hold the clay in there and after about three or four days that adhesive sort of lets go and the patch will fall off and hopefully by then she's good as new all right i've got my it's not livestock cement it's tag cement and a bandage and some towels so i'm gonna try to she looks pretty dry now but i'm gonna go ahead and kind of dab her off with the towels get her real dry and we'll pack the clay in there again and then this time we'll put that bandage over the top and hopefully it'll keep it in there you're pretty dry now okay that looks good make sure this is big enough so we don't get any of the glue or cement in the wound itself obviously [Music] a very good film job but i got it on there well that film job getting the bandage on i know wasn't the best but i have my hands full and the way that adhesive is boy as soon as it touches anything else it sticks to it so i had to just kind of get it on there and yeah that's what we did so i think i hope this is going to stay on and i think it'll do what i want it to do which is kind of hold all that in place you know keep flies out keep clay on and yeah we'll check out this girl in a couple days and see how she's doing it stayed on through that maybe it'll stay on she knows where to go that's for sure this doesn't really happen to me all that often but the last time it did happen i kept the cow locked up for a couple days so that i could keep an eye on her but that was a little bit of a different scenario she had the abscess in her jaw and as a result she'd lost a lot of body condition so i wanted to keep her in here to to one keep an eye on her but then to also push a little bit of extra feed at her so that she could sort of regain the body condition that she lost the cow that we just worked on however has not lost any body condition as you can see she's in fantastic shape so i don't see any harm in fact it might even be better for her to be out in her in her herd in her environment that she's used to that's a lot less stressful for her and i think that that in itself kind of helps to promote healing and that's what we need her to do we'll just kind of have to keep an eye on her here moving forward and see how it goes i might need to get her in the chute one more time uh just to sort of look at that again see how it's healing and maybe put uh some some new clay on there but i'm not really sure we're just gonna kind of play it by ear and see what she needs thanks for hanging out with me today guys and i hope i'll see you again on farmer tyler ranch [Music]

Channel: Farmer Tyler Ranch

Views: 2,248,084

Keywords: Farmer Tyler ranch, Cattle, Cows, Abscess, Lump jaw, Dr pimple popper

Id: EZCiYaJahjg

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 09 2022