Abscess Draining 101

WARNING!!!! DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU ARE AN EASY PUKER!

One of the more unpleasant aspects to farm life is having to doctor you animals. It can be messy, smelly, and occasionally, heartbreaking to have to do so.

I say heartbreaking, because I hate to inflict pain on my animals even if it’s for their own good in the long run. It always makes me tear up a bit to have to doctor one of my babies.

Rob use to call me “His tender hearted tough girl”

Still seems to fit.

If you recall from the shearing post, I think I mentioned leaving one of the rams in the barn so I could treat an abscess. (think because my brain is tired this morning and I’m too lazy to go back and look)

Said ram is our Tally boy, the big guy who follows us around like a puppy and just has the sweetest temper ever no matter what.

DISCLAIMER: Not all rams are friendly, so never turn your back on one, they can kill you if they so desire, and the really mean ones do desire your death.

Anywho.. back to Tally

After a week of treating him, which consisted of 3 doses of antibiotics and poking the abscess with a needle in order to get it to drain, it was not making much of an impact. When I palpated the abscess, I could feel a hard lump inside it. So, he essentially had a foreign body in there. Most likely it was some kind of seed head that migrated from inside his mouth to the spot where the abscess formed.

Since needle poking and expressing the pus was to no avail, I felt that further opening the abscess was going to be necessary. I luckily ran into one of my vets at the store on Friday. I ran it past him and he agreed with me that a small incision was necessary to get the foreign body out.

Since he had his vet truck with him, he gave me a syringe of lidoject and told me where to poke it in and around the abscess before I took a scalpel to it.

Ya gotta love a vet that knows his clients have “almost” as much working medical knowledge as he does LMAO!

On a side note, I had been accepted into Tufts Vet School right out of high school but I was not able to pay for it.

Today was surgery day!

Well, after we cleaned out the barn from shearing. Yeah, it took me a week before my back was up to the task. Michael did help me. Need it to dry out and be ready for lambing, which is the next big adventure around here.

Michael got a hold of Tally, and straddled him to hold on. I gave him a dose of banamine for systemic pain management. Banamine is basically sheep advil.

I got Tally’s face against my leg with the abscess side away from me. Sprayed his abscess with antiseptic and got the lidoject in. He was not overly amused with this messing of his face, but being the good boy he is, did not give us much trouble overall.

While I waited for his face to numb up, I took Mish for our daily pasture run. The timing is perfect for letting the meds work.

20 mins later…….

Michael got him straddled again, and I had his face against my leg. Gave his abscess and face a few pokes with my finger to see if he was going to react, he appeared to be quite numb as he didn’t react at all. Sprayed the abscess with the antiseptic again and released the scalpel!

I made a 1/2” vertical incision into the abscess cavity and it was like a dam broke.

Out came all the pus, but luckily not at a high rate of speed into my face like the last one. Yeah, that one is still burned into my nasal cavity. I think it will be there for eternity.

In the middle of the pus flood, the hard foreign body came out. I got it onto the end of scalpel and gave it a look and it sure did look like a seed head.

He did move a bit but nothing like if I had tried to do this without numbing his face first.

I got all the pus out of the cavity and gave the incision a good squeeze and wipe. I then sprayed the inside of the cavity with the antiseptic. I used Chlorohexidine for this, great stuff, kills damn near any kind of nasty bug.

Michaels comment was “damn, that’s gross!” I’m also glad he is not a puker, cus he would have absolutely drenched me from his position.

The whole process took less than 5 minutes, and yes I did get a bit choked up before hand. I do hate inflicting pain on my babies! However, my hand did not shake and I had no hesitation to do this procedure.

This bit of minor surgery should clear Tally’s abscess issue up quite well. He did also get another round of antibiotics just to make sure we don’t end up with a secondary infection now. I’ll be spraying him several times a day with the antiseptic to make sure also. It should heal beautifully from the inside out.

Yes, I could have had my vet do this for me. Because I have the skill set to do this myself, I just save about $300.00 which I did not have to start with by taking care of this on my own. Being a farmer/rancher means you must be versed in many skills, including minor surgery.

By the way, as soon as we were done, he went right to his feed pan and started snarfing his grain down.