Yes, folks, it’s been a tough one here.
I’ll go from bad to better, if that is ok with you.
Seun, one of our 3-year-old wethers, a sweet boy who makes beautiful fleeces, developed urinary calculi. Basically, that means his body made little mineral stones in his bladder and they moved and blocked his urethra thus rendering him unable to urinate. No amount of treatment was going to fix this, and I’ve never had any success with surgery for it in the past. I made the difficult decision to end his suffering and let him cross the Rainbow Bridge. I know he is with my Rob now, and that Rob will take care of him for me.
The OTC commercial preventative for this issue makes the water taste so nasty that they won’t drink it, thus making the problem worse. I’ll be adding apple cider vinegar to their water for a while to get them to become more acidic metabolically. It will also help dissolve any existing calculi in the boys. The girls don’t seem to have this issue much.
Miss Lucy, the Grand Dam of the flock got herself stuck on her side again. We were able to get her back up and on her feet. So she is back living in the barn and being pampered. She is eating and drinking well considering she was stuck again. I’ll prob leave her in there right thru lambing. She is always good with the babies, and often babysat the lambies so the moms could all go out and eat. I swear this sheep was a cat in a former life and has brought her 9 lives back with her. 15 years old this year and still kicking ass!
Mr. Tally. Well, he decided he no longer wished to be a kept man in the barn and he let me know in no uncertain terms that he was leaving. He did this by ramming me in the back of the knee, knocking me sideways into the barn door and almost got me on my ass. Yeah, ok, message received! First time in his 6-year life he has ever hit a person. So he is back down in the ram pen doing all his ram-ly things with his bro’s. I’ll just keep treating his eye down there.
The only real high point of the day was that I finished off another hat, so here are the pics of that.
I really dislike days like this past one.
Blessed Be!
Hope fully the next days will be better for you.
I’m so sorry and thank you for another lesson letting me know that these animals are family, at my age I do not have the skills or energy to do your job. Grateful for you, keep at it they bring so much joy to us. BTW have you tried CDS in their water it works miracles here.