Mike says the same goes for his pheasants which have kept him busy today, topping up medicated water and watching for any improvement. It's the weather you see: warm, moist, and changeable. Perfect for the proliferation of bacteria and other nasties, as well as maggots.
You probably see where this is going.
Ewe 0004, one of the hand-reared orphans, went down yesterday with lethargy and trembling. I popped her in the back of the Land Rover and made straight for the vets. She has a high fever, possibly pneumonia. Weather-related stress says the vets, he's seen lots of it lately. Ewe 0004 is on a daily course of penicillin.
More worrying is Eudora's smaller lamb. Only a few days old and she's already been brought back from the brink of a hypothermic death. Today I noticed she wasn't thriving. A quick check over revealed maggots hatching on her and burrowing into her skin. I removed as many as I could by hand with a tiny lice comb but I knew she needed further treatment. I called a local shepherd to see if he had something suitable.
He didn't. He sprayed her with a chemical which her sent her into instant shock. By the time we drove her home the few miles home she had convulsed and stopped breathing. Her heart stopped. I revived her with CPR and got her back not once but four times, from the edge of the brink of death this time.
In desperation I put her in the shower and washed the wretched blue spray off her skin. It made my fingers tingle, so heaven knows what it did to her poor backside. I toweled her off and put her back under the heat lamp. I hope her system can fight off the effects of the fly strike spray. I don't know if it can. She's still trembling and she's too weak to stand or suckle.
The vet meds book says that product should not be used on lambs this young or small, and certainly not in the dose that was applied to her. I'm heartbroken watching this poor little lamb, a creature in my care, suffer. I nursed her mother Eudora through a terrible illness last year. She survived and went on to produce these two beautiful ewe lambs. The least I can do is not kill them with my ignorance.
It's never like this on 'All Creatures Great and Small'.
Oof. Rough. Hope you have a happier day-after-your-birthday, Jen.
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday, although it sounds like it's been a pretty scummy day. Hope you can get the little one to suckle later.
ReplyDeleteThat's terrible about the lamb...so sorry her life has been so rough. You've saved her so often thus far that if she survives this time, you'll have to name her after a cat, nine lives and all. No one meant to harm her, poor thing. Well, not the best birthday by any stretch of the imagination, hope your week gets better.
ReplyDeleteWhat a bummer Jen. A mild soloution of Jeyes fluid and rubbing the skin with the back side of a pair of scissors, the rubbing action seems to confuse the maggots and mixed with the jeyes (VERY MILD)makes them reteat out of the holes that they make into the skin, I personally would never use anything other then jeyes on blowfly, it works, is cheap and doesn't alarm the animal too much (and most of us have it on hand as a disinfectant.)
ReplyDeleteSorry today has gone so crap, fingers crossed the little one pulls through.
It isn't ignorance, it is just a learning curve that keep us on our toes. Blow fly is a smell and a familiar wet fleece sight that anyone one who keeps sheep learns to spot, just wish last night i had been able to see the lambs closer.
xx
Happy Birthday Jen, Not how you want your birthday to go hunni x Hope you got my email :) XX
ReplyDeleteHi Jen. I'm so sorry to hear about the smaller lamb. Well done you for persevering with the CPR and getting her back so many times. Fingers crossed for you both, and I hope the outcome in the morning is better. And that you get to have a quiet drink sometime later in the week to celebrate your 42nd...
ReplyDeleteJennifer, try not to blame yourself too much. You were trying to help her. A person can not expect to know everything there is to know. You were relying on the help of another, who didn't know as much as he thought he did either. God knows how hard you are trying to save this little lamb. I hope she recovers for her sake and yours. Happy Birthday. I hope you took time for a nice meal or a glass of wine to celebrate.
ReplyDeleteWow. Rough birthday, Jen. I'm hoping for that happy ending too. Keep us posted. And chin up.
ReplyDeleteI guess it's too late to wish you a happy birthday! How scary- I hope the baby will be okay. Would you have been better off smothering the maggots in salad oil or something? I don't even know if that would work. Maybe a soapy shampoo? Actually, now that I've read a little more on it, it seems that maggots are pretty hard to kill. I'm sorry Jen- what a lousy way to spend a birthday.
ReplyDeleteOh Jen, I'll pray for little Girlie. She's strong enough to make. And Happy Birthday after all this stress and work!
ReplyDeleteI hate that anything to do with raising animals HAS such a learning curve, but whether chickens or sheep, it does. I lost way too many chickens in that learning curve. It is certainly easier for me to "write off" chickens than it would be sheep, but regardless, it is NEVER easy to feel like "if only knew that, if only I knew MORE" when it is a LIFE of any sort. I have read these posts from the top down, so I KNOW this little one is still surviving, which makes me happy. The CPR? Amazing. The pillow in the house with a little baby lamb on it? I want to come live with YOU during lambing time. I have always wanted to bottle feed a lamb, and now I could curl up and sleep with one too!
ReplyDeleteHusband once gave our beloved old dog CPR whilst he was having a seizure (the dog, not hubby!) and I am sure he saved Ollie's life. He held his jaw closed gently and blew down the dog's nostrils. I did the chest compression bit. The old lad lived for another three months after that.
ReplyDeleteWe've had good success using a mixture of 1/3 apple cider vinegar, 1/3 mouthwash, and 1/3 water in a sprayer and shaken before spraying on animals for fly and mosquito repellant. It's the only thing I will use on infant animals.
ReplyDeleteFrom Jen at M&T
ReplyDeleteMisty - Thanks for that recipe. I am definitely going to give it a try. I tried manually removing all the horrible maggots but it wasn't enough. We tried the chemical in desperation.