What Now?

We've had it very good for calving over the years with only one real mishap where we lost a cow and a calf.  Last year was tough with a new heifer calving for the first time and having twins.  That heifer, now a cow was #51.  She never nursed the calves properly and we ended up losing both of her calves after bottle feeding them for months.  This year she gave us a problem again.  She had her water bag hanging out for much longer than normal.  This was during my second cutting of hay which turned out to be a bad turn also, but I'll write about that later.  Anyway Sara came out to the hayfield to tell me that the water bag shouldn't hang more than a couple of hours.  So I called the vet and he said he'd want to know what was going on in there.  Look for a breach or a head back etc.  George and I setup the corral panel, chute and headgate.  Luckily #51 is our most gentle cow and she allowed us to walk her up to the corral and she went easily into the chute and headgate.  While she was walking I put my hand in her and could feel feet so I knew the calf was very close.  When she was in the headgate I was able to reach in further and could feel that everything felt normal, and was right and ready to go but she wasn't pushing.  I decided that I should help things along and find out if this calf was alive.  I reached in and grabbed both of the calf's front legs and pulled until my hands ached.  After my hands had stopped cramping I pulled some more.  Eventually George started helping and it wasn't long until the head was just about out.  A little pulling down rather than back and the calf slid out.  We carried the calf around to the front of the chute and let the cow out.  She took to the calf right away and all was good except we noticed that she had what appeared to be another water sack hanging at one point.  Maybe twins again, but then later I saw placenta so I didn't think much of it again.  Everything was good until after about a day we never seemed to catch the calf nursing.  Sara and I decided to try to strip some milk from the cow and so back to the corral the cow went, this time with calf in tow.  We put the calf on the cow at first but the cow kicked her back.  Then Sara tried to milk the cow but she was dry.  At that point we figured that the cow had been nursed dry so we let them go back to what they were doing.  Another 24 hours later and the calf was looking bad so we started bottle feeding.  Things went down hill quickly for the calf and eventually we lost the calf.  In the mean time it was suggested that #51 might have another twin in there that wasn't alive that could be life threatening, so back to the chute again.  This time I had to go shoulder deep to look for another calf.  No calf so we let her go again.  Once she has closed back up she'll go to the sale barn.  Too bad too because she is so gentle it would be great to have a herd of cows with her disposition.