ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 6, 1996 TAG: 9602060047
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Reporter's Notebook
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE
Next time you clog the pre-storm aisles at Kroger (and the way this winter's going, there's no reason to think you won't), think of Jerry Roberson.
He'll be wondering if he should stay overnight in Blacksburg, or head home to the hills.
Roberson, a farm-animal veterinarian, has been the lucky guy on call not just during the Storm of '96, but its lesser reprise of last Thursday night. As you may recall, predictions seemed to run from 4 to 14 inches of snow, a daub or a deluge of ice, and maybe even some sleet.
It was hard to divine just what to do, so Roberson decided to drive home, up past Newport near the Craig County line. At 3:30 a.m., the call came. A new mama cow with milk fever was sick in Blacksburg, at Virginia Tech's dairy farm.
Eight inches of snow had fallen at his house; he figures he was the second driver to pass along the roads.
"I don't think I'd have made it without a four-wheel drive," he said. Roberson is one of 12 veterinarians in the Production Management Medicine section at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine. Working alongside them are a handful of residents, and it's their job to look after the horses, cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, and the occasional llama of our area farms when they get sick.
Neither wind nor rain nor dark of night keeps them from their rounds. When Roberson got to the sick cow, a little after 4 a.m. last Friday, he gave her an injection of calcium in one of her veins. He feels pretty sure she'll be fine now. She's a Jersey, and milk fever's more common in that breed. The low-calcium condition usually strikes dairy cows within the first week after they calve. "It could kill them," Roberson said.
"When they have hypocalcemia, they're in all different states. They're kind of aware you're there, but they don't care what you do to them. Some are hyper, but down. Most often, they're pretty depressed, and they don't care if you stick something in their vein."
Heavy calving season starts in late winter - still three or so weeks away - but the earlier winter still poses its own challenges.
"A lot of time, this time of year, we see animals on the brink - maybe not having enough nutrition. Some other kind of stress on top of that makes them crash," Roberson said.
Consider their food. The pasture grass is, to say the least, not in season. "They primarily depend on hay," Roberson said. Either that, or "lick tanks," which Roberson describes as a big tub filled with protein-rich liquid. Because cows need good ol' energy-producing carbohydrates like the rest of us, farmers also give them grain.
For the most part, the cattle you pass as you drive by farms get through winter just fine.
"Cattle are pretty tough," said Roberson, who earned degrees in Oklahoma and Washington state. "We can talk about Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota than we do."
Still, don't count Virginia out when it comes to weather. Now just over two years into his tenure at Tech, Roberson's heard some war stories. The toughest case of his career was here, when he had to tend a new mama cow who had just given birth and was lying uphill, in mud and briars. A tractor had to help haul Roberson and his truck up the farm's muddy driveway.
And those of us who lived through it will never forget the ice storms of '94. "I heard of several cases of cattle slipping and breaking legs," said Roberson. "Ice is worse than snow. They can still get around in the snow. Ice is worse, especially around here, where a lot of people are on hills."
LENGTH: Medium: 70 linesby CNB