A Poop By Any Other Name.......

Is still a turd!

My son caught me looking at and picking thru a pile of horse poo this morning.  He thinks I’m nuts.  Soooo…….

We seem to have a rash of intestinal problems here on the farm this week. 

Not wholly unusual since we are transitioning from green graze to drier graze and/or hay use.  Currently, my pasture is pretty well done for the year.  The side yard and around the house still has some nice tall growth and the sheep have been grazing that for the past two weeks.  I intentionally let it grow all summer just for this use.  I may get another 2-3 weeks out of that for the sheep before we are solidly on hay for the rest of the year and into next.  Plus they fertilize as they go!

Back to the topic at hand. 

I had one ewe showing signs of pain.  Griding her teeth, laying down and getting back up, and lagging behind the rest of the flock trying to stay alone.  The big clue was her arching her back.  The arching is indicative of belly pain. I got a hold of her, and brought her back to the house.  Michael held onto her while I checked her temp to make sure she was not running a fever and have a potential infection.  Luckily no temp. 

I am grateful for her dropping a big poop while I was watching.  It was wet, not formed, and very very green.  No worms in it, which is great!  I am thinking she found a nice patch of really green grass and stuffed herself, thus bringing on her tummy ache.  She got a dose of Pepto bismol and a dose of sheep advil.  I put her back into the corral with a pan of baking soda and dry hay for the next two days.  She has cleared up, poop is almost back to normal, and she is her normal self again. 

Pretty cool that sheep can have Pepto, and kaopectate!  I didn’t have any kaopectate on hand, which is actually my med of choice for sheepie tummy aches.  I can’t find it locally, so I will have to get it from amazon.  Ugh.

The other issues is that Brandy horse managed to push a door open to the tack room in the barn.  To her credit, it was pretty easy since the door had not been shut all the way.  Miss Smartypants did manage to get the grain storage open and give herself a big old treat of somewhere between 10-20lbs of sweet feed pellets. 

Well crap.

Now we are on colic watch, which is where it comes in that my son saw me pawing thru a pile of horse pootie.  I had a legitimate reason for looking.

Really….I do!

Poop can tell us so much of what is going on with our animals. 

It shows us what they are eating.  If they are dehydrated.  If they have a load of worms.  If they have an infection in their GI system. If they are stressed or calm.  If they have a belly ache.  Lots of stuff to see in a nice steaming pile of poo.

Brandy’s poop told me she was well hydrated, eating some hay and dry grass, and that the grain snack she helped herself to had not made its way out yet. 

Yes, I was looking for grain husks and undigested grain bits.  Pellet feed is not like a scoop of straight sweet feed.  There are not many husks or grain bits, but there are some.  She was not passing it yet.

She is eating, drinking, and obviously pooping so things are moving the way they should be, no indication of belly pain, no kicking or laying down rolling around.  If she is good all day tomorrow, I think we will be in the clear as far as the colic goes. 

Colic is defined as an obstruction in the intestines.  Basically, whatever they eat creates constipation.  If it’s really dry feed and the animal does not drink enough water it can come on.  Sand colic is another problem, and I lost a horse to that several years ago despite so much work by the vet and myself to keep her alive.  It was just not to be. 

Finding worms in the pootie is not a good thing and it means I either need to find the sheep in question, or worm the entire flock.  And I hate to have to do that.  They can build up a resistance to the meds, much like antibiotic resistance, and then you just can’t kill those nasty suckers.  Every fall, my flock gets lots of pumpkins.  The seeds are a natural dewormer and the fiber pushes all that stuff right out of their bellies and guts, keeping them worm free. 

Unfortunately, the local wild life can transmit worms to my flock.  When I find it I do go thru the deer poo looking for anything that can be detrimental to my flock. 

I sorta seem to have a poo fetish. 

Did you know that wolves and coyotes can transmit chronic wasting disease that is so damaging to deer, elk, and moose?  If they eat the carcass of an infected animal, the prion passes thru their GI tract without damage, and is then pooped out as they move.  It then gets into the ground and grass and is then eaten by the deer, elk, and moose.  Sad, isn’t it?

Yeah, I have a poop fetish.  No question. I even look at the poop when I go to someone else’s farm. Not obvious like picking thru a pile, but giving it a look see as I walk by it.

Do you think this is a sickness on my part? Sometimes I wonder.

I do also watch the dog and cat poo.  One of the barn kitties has a tapeworm thing going on and has been given his first dose of dewormer.  I hope to see an improvement in that soon.  If not, he will get another dose.  I hope it clears it up in one shot, he was less than thrilled with me shoving a pill down his throat and made his displeasure known by biting me and slicing me open with his claws.

Ah, so much fun and information just in a pile of poo!!!

Blessed Be!