I Prefer the Dull Moments

I pretty much dislike the saying “Never a dull moment”

I prefer the dull moments.  Dull moments around here mean nobody is hurt, sick, stuck, or doing stupid stuff.  Dull means nothing is self-destructing.  Dull means way less worry and stress for me.  I have enough of that already without something here adding to it. 

Today was not a dull moment. 

I was out at 7am doing my normal daily chores, ran the house wolf, got Lucy out eating her grain, and I go down to the ram pen to feed the boys and what do I find hiding behind the bale of hay?

Angus ram, outside the pen, laying on his side with two corral panels laying on top of him. 

Oh crap.

I thought he was dead at first as I’m now trying to hustle thru snow and ice, to get to him, and his head moved. 

Oh crap.

I get to his side, get the panels off him, fold his legs in the right position and got him rolled onto his stomach.  As I’m holding him upright, I called my son to come home and help me.

Those of you who have never seen or heard of Angus, here is his run down.  He is one of my two rams, he is the fine wool white ram, and he is big.  By big I mean he runs about 250-275 pounds, and stands taller than my hips.  He is also a good boy, not a hitter, pretty passive, and makes beautiful babies with fine white wool. 

It was apparent from the pile of poop behind him that he had been laying there for several hours. 

Having sheep laying on their side for a long period of time is quite often a death sentence for them.  It messes up their rumen and it’s a painful way for them to go. 

I’m not sure why he decided that last night was the time to jump a fence that he has never jumped before.  Either the temptation of a brand new bale of hay standing right there, which he had hay off of in their feeder, or one of the ewes a few hundred yards away smelled too good and he was feeling particularly rutty.   

The corral panels that fell on him were set up to keep the rams from leaving their pen.  The area where their feeder is has got some build up from them being messy boys, and it’s higher than ground level.  We do take out bunches of old hay keep it low, but alas, we appear to have failed. 

Back to me and Angus. 

He kept trying to roll back onto his side, so I decided that I needed to try and get him up on his feet.  My son has not made it back from his job site yet, and I didn’t want to wait and put Angus into a worse position.

So I dead lifted him from below my knees to above my hips to get him on his feet.  And turn him around the right direction to move at the same time.

Shout out to Rocky Sheep Coats, I got him picked up by his coat and it didn’t tear at all!!  You can’t imagine how grateful I am that I coat my sheep!

Angus is up on 3 feet, his front left foot kept rolling under his leg and he was trying to stand on his ankle, so as he’s leaning on me I’m reaching down to straight his foot out and at the same time, checking for deformity and crepitus to ensure its not broken. 

I’m glad nobody could see me, it was pretty ugly to see me knees bent, big sheep leaning on me, me leaning over with my butt stuck out as a counterweight so I didn’t fall on Angus checking for a broken leg, glasses sliding down my nose and snot making an appearance.  Plus by now, I had to pee. That would have been quite the sight.

After a few minutes of this, he tried to take a few steps, which was good for me as it meant I could now park my butt against a tree to take some of the stress off my back as he was leaning against my legs. 

We made progress working our way back to the door of the pen.  He did go down again; I think his back leg slipped on some ice and he plopped back down. 

Here’s where it really got rodeo like. 

One: it started snowing like crazy, big huge white flakes coming down hard. 

Two: Douglas, my other ram, decided that since Angus was out, he needed to be also, so he jumped the fence to join us. 

Now, having Douglas out would not have been a major issue, except….

One: Lucy is out and while she is too old to get pregnant, I didn’t need Douglas to try to jump on her and knock her down and hurt her.

Two: Douglas decided that Angus was a good target to try to “ride” and jumped on him. 

I got the grain bucked and managed to get Douglas back in the pen and into the catch pen so he couldn’t keep causing trouble for me and Angus.  Needless to say, he was less than cooperative with this process. He thought running back to Angus was a better option than getting grain.

I got back to Angus, got him back on his feet and we stood there a bit resting. 

He decided he wanted to walk a bit and we made it back into the ram pen, and he went down again.  Since he was laying on his stomach, I made a dash to the house for a dose of banamine and scissors. 

Banamine is a drug that is used for pain management and inflammation.  Basically, its advil for livestock.  It’s a NSAID in liquid form.

He got his dose of that and I’m sure you are wondering why I grabbed scissor.  I thought it would be a good time to trim the wool around his eyes.  He was being quite docile, and it gave me the chance to trim him up.  He was getting pretty fuzzy around the eyes and I didn’t want him to become wool blind.  I gotta take my chances as they come.  Trying to do this while he is feeling normal is harder since he does toss his head around.  I would too if someone was waving scissors in front of my eyes.  I really didn’t want to accidently stab him in the eye if I can do this while he is quiet.

By now, my son is home and between us we got him back on his feet.  It was much easier this time as Angus did help with the process.  He was able to get his back legs up under him and only needed us to lift his front.

I left Angus leaning on Michael and went to pitch hay for Douglas and filled their feeder. I brought a big handful over to Angus and he started to nibble on it.  I brought a pan of water over also but he was not ready to drink anything. 

One good thing, since the moment I got him first rolled onto his belly, he started to belch.  And he was still at it.  A super good sign!!!  He was getting gas build up in his rumen from laying down.  Getting all that out with some good belching is a huge improvement for him.  It also means that I didn’t have to needle decompress his rumen for him to stop him from bloating. 

Angus decided he wanted to walk into their shelter, which is a smallish Quonset hut for livestock.  Michael walked him in and Angus stood there for a bit before laying down on his own. 

I put a bunch of hay in front of him and he started to eat it.  He also had his pan of water within reach of his nose. 

Since he was as stable as he could be for the moment, I got Michael to help me get a bale of hay out into the pasture for the rest of the flock.  Thanks to the snow, I almost fell off the tractor when my foot slipped as I climbed up.  Yeah, that was fun.

It is still snowing.  Snowing hard, and it also made seeing tough.  I had to take my glasses off when we were dealing with Angus in the pen since they were covered in snow, and all fogged up.   

We got the bale out and I told Michael to head back to work.  I got the rest of the sheep out and dogs fed.  Had to get the naughties back into the corral too.  By now, we had almost 1 inch of snow on the ground in about 2 hours. 

I went back to check Angus and he was half way up.  He had his back end off the ground and leaning against the side of the hut and he was eating.  I snuck in there and lifted his front end up for him.  He kept eating but was still not ready for water.  He was also belching really well.  Can you picture Booger from “Revenge of the Nerds”?  It was impressive belching from a sheep.  Lots of rumen rumbling too!

I took the opportunity to head into the house and warm up and find some dry clothes.  Every bit of my outer wear was soaked thru.  I was wearing my farmer clothes thankfully.  This is also why I still have my husbands clothing here, I can fit into his farmer clothes if I had to go back outside for any length of time while mine dry. 

I could put them in the dryer but why waste the electricity.  Everything is hanging by the wood stove drying out. 

I’ve been checking Angus every 15-20 minutes.  He’s been laying back down in a normal position and every time I’m out he’s in a different spot.  Whether he is getting up and laying down or just scootching around I don’t know.  I did find him up on his feet finally, and eating again, and I watched him get a big drink of water. 

While he is not out of the woods yet, he has made huge improvements in a few hours.  Once he stays stable on his feet, I can let Douglas out of solitary confinement.  I don’t want him to try and knock Angus down. 

I thought the worst thing I was going to have to deal with today was picking up a pile of coyote scat that the house wolf was trying to eat on our run.

Now, what should I make for dinner?

Blessed Be.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Thank you to the folks that have upgraded to paid subscribers. I am grateful that you value my farm and writing enough to want to support it with your hard earned money. Your subscriptions will help me to keep my farm running and continue the dream my husband and I started. Thank you so very much!

I ask that if you like my work, would you please help support my Substack. You can do this by liking, commenting, sharing or please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Thank you for your continued reading and support! I am grateful to all of you who continue to come back to visit the farm!

As a special thank you, I am offering 20% off your paid subscription if you upgrade before the end of this year.

Thank you dear readers!!

---