Milk Fever

This is our newest addition. A holstein/red angus cross heifer calf born on the 18th of October. She was born to Dixie, my holstein milk cow. Strangely enough she was even born on her due date. The calf is doing just fine, but Dixie went down with milk fever....again. She went down with milk fever when she had Daisy last year. Luckily I was able to get her an I.V. going with a calcium and electrolyte solution and within about 10 hours she was back on her feet. However this time I thought for sure she was going to die. She was starting to perk up after about 2 hours of IV therapy and then she looked right at me, her eyes rolled all the way back in her head and she flopped on her back. I thought for sure she was having a heart attack. I ran in and called my neighbor (he used to work on a dairy farm and has alot of experience with holsteins) he came right over and I was able to get a hold of my vet. Luckily she shook whatever it was off and started to perk up again. She even started to eat (which is a great sign) however I couldn't get any water in her for a few more hours. So we continued the IV therapy until she started moving around so much that I couldn't keep the IV in her. Then I had to give the poor old girl a bunch of SubQ (under the skin) shots of calcium. These shots absorb slower and give her another steady supply of calcium when IV isn't working. She really hated the shots. I also had to sit on my hands and knees and milk her while she was laying down so I could bottle feed her little calf. Thankfully everything turned out well and Momma and baby are doing fine. Now I will have a winters supply of fresh milk and cream.
I forgot to mention that this is Gus's first calf. I think we will call her Delta. My other milk cows names are Dixie and Daisy, so I wanted to stick with the D girl southern names. The song Delta Dawn came to my head, so there you have it. Little Delta Dawn.