It is crazy the way things come back to you at the strangest times. I got a call from the owner of the property where I have Luke with some fall calving cows. She stated that I needed to come check on Luke as he had a big sore on his ear. The property is just down the street and he being halter broke I just took a bucket of cubes, a halter and Jazz, my border collie. As soon as I saw his ear I remember someone telling me early on that when you had the vet put in metal tags to do them on the bottom of the ear as they can cause problems in the ear. Well I ask my vet but was assured there shouldn't be any problem and they were put in the top of the ear.
Now, here we are three years later and this is from a metal tag. You can follow on our youtube channel to see us taking it out, if your stomach is not queasy. I led luke home, of course close to dark.
He was put in our chute and had to tie his horn around just to work on it. After cleaning off the scab we got down to the tag. Now, if you ever find yourself in this situation I have some tips. First, the best thing to do is DON"T get in this situation, insist your vet put the tags in bottom of ears. Book mark this blog to show them the pictures so they can see what can happen. Second, to get the metal tag out bolt cutters don't work. Poor Luke as we tried a few times to realize the flat metal twist as you are trying to get a hold of it and I am sure it caused excruciating pain. I was beginning to feel extremely bad for him. Realizing I had to do something I found this. If you get two sets of plyers and grab top and bottom the metal tag actually opens very easy. So finally it was done and out. Finished cleaning it up, he seemed to feel better already. I kept him overnight and gave him an antibiotic shot the next day. He don't do well with needles by the way and back with his ladies he went happily doing his thing.
Healing up nicely. It looks like we won't lose the ear.
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