That Blog Post About Lovey, our calf with her heart in her neck - Part One
Who TF is Lovey?
The Short Answer → She’s a very special little heifer who was born on our farm in June of 2023. Lovey has ectopia cordis meaning her heart is in her neck. She’s also my “shot heard round the world” for lack of a better term and a huge reason why I gained the following I did on my Facebook page.
You’ll have to keep reading for the longer answer.
Lovey’s Birth
It was a cold, rainy day in the middle of our 2023 calving season. I had just woken up and looked out of my bedroom window to check on the cows. The first thing that caught my eye was Pebbles, one of our last four pregnant cows, laying all by her lonesome in the back corner of the pasture.
For those who aren’t familiar with cattle, more often than not a cow or heifer will isolate herself when she’s ready to have her baby, then stay with the calf after it’s born even if the rest of the herd ventures off. Therefore, one of my duties as our cow-calf beef farm’s self appointed cow doula is to keep an eye out for any cows that are just hanging out all by their lonesome, such as Pebbles was doing that day.
After changing out of my pajamas and into my barn clothes, I made my way out in the rain to Pebbles in the corner of the pasture, and sure enough, right behind her was an adorable little baby. Here’s where the story gets interesting…
I sent the picture above to my husband letting him know Pebbles had calved so he could get ready to help move the cow calf pair to the barn. Taking every mom & baby to the barn isn’t standard practice, but because of the unusually high amount of fatalities we had that year along with the less than stellar weather conditions that day, we opted to go the “better safe than sorry” route.
As I waited for my husband to come out to the pasture, I checked to make sure the baby was actually alive and wanted to see if it was a bull calf or a heifer calf. When I did, I noticed a weird pulsating mass in its neck, but didn’t really pay it too much attention because getting the baby and her mom into the barn was our priority.
Once my husband was outside, he hooked our little trailer up to the 4 wheeler so I could drive the baby through the mud to the barn while he made sure her mom followed.
When mom and baby were safely in the barn, we moved our attention to the pulsating mass on the baby's neck. Neither of us had ever seen anything like it before, so we messaged a quick video over to our vet, then turned to Google and social media to try and figure out wtf was going on with this baby as well as what, if anything, we could do to help.
Now before any keyboard warriors start attacking me in the comments for making a post on social media “instead of helping the calf” or try accusing me of being a horrible person for not taking the calf to the vet, I need to interrupt my story with a side tangent about what vet care is like for us on a rural, large animal farm.
If you have a small dog and live in a more heavily populated area, you likely have many options available when it comes to your furry friend’s healthcare. You’re also blessed with the convenience of being able to load your little companion up into your car and can easily transport them to your local veterinary clinic.
That’s not how it is for large animal farmers and ranchers in rural communities.
First off, cows are BIG so they’re not as easy to transport as small pets. Our cows would also likely fill the entire waiting room of a typical vet clinic, so many large animal vets will come right to the farm to check on your livestock. Even if the vet is available immediately, there’s usually still a delay in the vet getting to the farm because of how far she has to drive.
But having the vet available immediately is unfortunately a rarity in our area. Large animal vets are few and far between here, so our vet has to cover hundreds of miles and visits countless farms everyday. That being said, we’ve gotten very skilled at educating ourselves, seeking out answers when we have questions, and knowing when the situation exceeds our knowledge requiring veterinary assistance.
Lovey’s Fame
Okay, back to the story of Lovey…
We had contacted our vet because we felt that whatever was going on with this calf was out of our wheelhouse. Again, I repeat…we contacted our vet and we were doing our own research while we waited for her response. This included sharing a short video of the pulsating mass on social media to see if any other farmers had dealt with something similar. Long story short, there are some very opinionated assholes out there who are not afraid to be rude AF on a random stranger’s post. Thankfully there are also people out there who are genuinely curious and wanted to help us help our calf. Needless to say, between the angry trolls and the supportive humans, that Reel got shared a LOT!
Based on our research, the helpful comments we received on social media, and what a couple vet friends of mine said after seeing the video, any or none of the following could have been what we were dealing with.
The calf could have a heart disease/defect that was making her heart work so hard we were seeing bounding pulses.
The umbilocal cord could have been wrapped around her neck at some point and majorly messed up some blood vessels.
The calf’s heart could literally be in her neck.
We weren’t sure if what was going on would be temporary, or if it was something that would go away on it’s own. Either way, we figured the calf wouldn’t live very long, and we were confused as to how she was even alive to begin with.
When our vet was able to get back to us, she basically concluded the same. Regardless of what was going on with this calf, there wasn’t going to be a whole lot we could do about it that wouldn’t be extremely invasive and incredibly expensive. Our vet offered to find time to come out and check on the calf later that night, but knowing that there wasn’t really anything she would be able to do anyway, we opted to just keep her updated on the calf via text and wait for her to be in the area to come check on it.
Lovey’s Life
As we waited for the vet to let us know when she’d be able to come to the farm and see Lovey, we were heavily monitoring her quality of life, and as far as we could tell she was doing better than most of the calves we had born that year. It was during this time that I named her “Lovey”, but I’ll explain that more in part two.
When Lovey was 3 weeks old, our vet came out to the farm to give her an exam. Here’s what we learned:
The pulsating mass was her freaking heart
Instead of pointing back towards her butt, the calf’s heart pointed slightly forward
The calf’s ribs grew more “in” than normal, most likely due to her heart not being in there
There was no second heart beating in the calf’s ribcage
We obviously talked with our vet about what, if anything, we could do to help the calf. Her biggest concern at the time was the calf’s rumen being able to develop properly, and heart failure could obviously occur at any time. There wasn’t a whole lot we could do other than keeping a close eye on the calf to monitor her quality of life.
So we continued to do just that. We kept Pebbles and her baby separate from everyone else. We made sure the calf was able to get milk from her mom. We made sure her breathing was okay and that she was able to move around. And we waited…
Meanwhile, I had an abundance of internet strangers concerned about the wellbeing of our little anomaly, so I continued to share periodic updates on my social media accounts. And, of course, many of those videos were invaded by trolls claiming we didn’t care about this animal. 🙄 But regardless, Lovey continued to grow without problems until she was about 5 months old.
And that’s where I’ll leave things for now.
You can check out part two of Lovey’s story here and subscribe to my newsletter for future Lovey updates.
