Breeched fawn

I guess this is more sharing info on a situation we encountered yesterday than anything and I'll update it later if something changes.....



Yesterday morning we had an AI doe get stressed because of cows on the fence (a problem I'm hoping to resolve today at 2). She went into labor and had a healthy buck fawn around 1030 or so. At 1 when June went back over to check to see if she had her other fawn she had 2 legs sticking out crossed. She called me and I went over. You could see the legs moving so we knew the fawn was alive. By 145 nothing had changed and I called our vet and Daniel Rychlik and we decided it best to give her 30 minutes alone and if nothing had changed take action.



I came back to the house and got everything ready while June went to pick our son up from school( Its frickin disgraceful that our school system had school on Memorial Day yet took Columbus Day and MLK Day off).



At 230 she was the same but no more movement on the fawn legs so I decided to wait to knock her down until June got back. At 330 the dart hit and at 340 we were at here. I will say I did hit her hard, 1cc of 4cc Xylazine 333 mixed to a bottle of Telazol, what I normally use for a mature buck. We covered her with wet towels we had put in the freezer for 30 minutes since the temp was in the upper 80's. I gave her 3 cc of banamine IM as soon as I got to her as well. This was probably the worst thing my wife has ever had to do but my hands wouldnt fit..... we tried pulling the fawn first with a few small tugs and it didnt budge. She then pushed her hand all the way into her cavity to find that the fawns head had been turned backwards. I dont know if the fawn just wasnt in the birthing position when she went into labor, if the birthing canal started tightening up after the first one(a buck that was larger than the one stuck) or what happened.



She the forced the entire fawn back in and got the head turned around, at this time we knew the fawn was dead and we were just trying to remove it. We tried to pull it by its head but the shoulders wouldnt fit so she reinserted the fawn and was able to get one leg and the head into the canal with the help of plenty of KY Jelly we were able to pull it out.



During the process she was wearing elbow latex gloves lubed with KY while I just had regular laytex. If your reaching in you only want to put KY on the arms and outside of your hand because the fawn is plenty slippery with out Ky and it makes it difficult to get a grip.



We then cleaned all the afterbirth out we could and noticed a little bleeding on the top side of her canal. We then cleaned her out completely with Nolvasan liquid and I gave her 2.5 cc of Twin Pen sub Q on both sides of her behind the shoulders for a total of 5. Thats more than recommended, but we figured get it in her while we could and an overdose of pennicillian was the least of our worries. I also gave her 3 ccs B complex sub q as well and reversed her.



We pulled the buck fawn to bottle raise not knowing how she would recover or how much the drugs would interact. Its the only thing to do in this situation.



If this happens again I would take action quicker to try to save the fawn but for now everyone seems to be OK. She came to and was very ginger but this morning she seemed to be fine and was eating and drinking which the vet says is the most important thing right now. If something happens to the mother I'll update the post. Just thought the experience would be good to have on here as well as everyones comments on things they might wouldve done differently. BTW, we named the buck fawn Lucky.......

The fawn wasnt completely backwards, more sideways feet first head back. There wasnt a vet here, just contacted over the phone. Like wooden said the umbillical cord was probably broken a couple hours after the first fawn came and the fawn left in there died shortly after. The main reason we didnt take action sooner was 2 days earlier we had a set of quads born in there that came in pairs 2 hours apart. From now on if we see legs and no nose we'll start immediately.



Looking back now if it happened again and the fawn was alive I believe the best thing to do first is completely reinsert the fawn and align it by hand then pull. I'm not sure about attaching anything to the fawn anywhere but its lower legs and aligning its nose with your fingers to pull(if its alive). But this would take a woman to do or someone with really small hands. We had a piece of parachute cord with a slip knot there but that does a person no good unless the fawn is lined up right, front legs first with nose out or one front leg with the nose.



I couldnt get my hand past her hips without the fear of tearing something so my wife did everything. My point there is that you had better have the rope or lamb puller attached before you reinsert the fawn to realign it if you dont have someone there with small enough hands. Its no where near as simple as pulling a calf, I figured that out 5 minutes into the ordeal. From the people Ive spoken to since, wooden is right that atleast one front leg and head HAVE to come together at the same time for a safe birth to a live fawn.



The doe seems to be ok so far, a little puffy still around the rear and no visible signs of puss or infection. I'll feel better in another couple of weeks. If she makes it through I'll live breed her this fall probably although I might leave her in the lap ai does so I can have the vet look at her internally when she's down, still deciding. If she shows any sign of sickness in the next few weeks I'll knock her down again and have the vet out to open her up and clean her out internally. I think its best to have a plan for all the possibilities.



Side Note-We were 100% on our LAP AI this year without the teaser buck where as we were 58% last year with the teaser buck..... I'm fortunate to have Dr Edmiston 7 miles from me, I'm also considering AI'ng in two groups instead of one because its overwhelming to have that many fawns born at once......