Louise Lambs and Rialey saves the day

Every Sunday morning, Big Onion and I with the help of Rialey, our trusty English Shepherd farm dog, gather up the entire flock of sheep a quick round of heath checks. We check and make note of FAMACA of all adults and older lambs then deworm anyone who has a low score, a poor body weight, or obvious evidence of loose stool. Right now with so many young and nursing lambs on the ground, we also check weights on all the babies to make sure they are growing at a good rate and do not have any signs of diarrhea or other issues.

Last Sunday morning, we were gathering the herd as usual. I went out with Rialey while Big Onion called the sheep while shaking a noisy can of corn. Usually we can get the entire flock into our holding area with very little stress on them or effort on our part. At this point, everyone knows the drill. This particular morning, Rialey and I had moved the flock up from the second pasture and across the bridge. We were getting ready to send them Big Onion's way when I saw movement back down the hill and heard the telltale cry of a new mother sheep. Since Big Onion seemed to have the rest of the flock under control and I knew we still had a couple of ewes ready to lamb at any minute, I called Rialey to come quietly to my side then asked her to stay with me while we went to investigate.

Crossing the bridge, I saw Louise calling and calling and torn between running to join the rest of the flock and leaving a sodden, pathetic little lamb who barely seemed to be on its feet. Back on the hill I saw a very fresh afterbirth. I was obvious that Louise had lambed very, very recently. I sent Rialey off in the opposite direction of the new mother then dropped her into a down so as not to spook her away from the lamb then slowly approached mother and child. Talking to her quietly, I scooped up the little lamb, too small and feeble to run away and tried to get Louise to follow me back across the bridge and into the first pasture.

Louise responded as mother sheep often do. She acted as though I had just performed the most amazing of magic tricks before her eyes and made that lamb disappear into thin air. Before I could blink or even drop the lamb low enough so that she could see it, she had taken off in a random direction at high speed, all the time calling her lungs out for her missing little one.

Rialey, reading the situation, swept into action and starting herding momma back towards me. With soggy lamb in hand and a distressed mother sheep darting around then being constantly redirected by the dog, all four of us eventually made our way back into the first pasture where I finally managed to get a hold on Louise's collar and shoved the lamb into her face. Magically the lamb reappeared into her reality and with my pulling, Rialey's pushing, and the drive to stay near her new offspring, we eventually got mother and child settled into a pen.

Meanwhile, poor Big Onion had been trying to handle the entire rest of the flock sans help. While we were trying to move Louise, I could hear him calling to Rialey to come and take her usual position to hold the flock in place. At the time, I made it clear to Rialey that she should disregard that order and help deal with the more pressing situation. I hoped Big Onion would understand.

Once we finally had Louise and what turned out to be her daughter firmly secured in the safety and privacy of a pen, I sent Ry around the corner to go and help her dad. Right at that moment, a much older lamb came sprinting around the corner! One of Fancy's lambs, Dakota, had seen an opening and with no dog to stop her, made a break for it!

Rialey saw the lamb then looked at me for direction. I signaled her to try and herd it back to the rest of the group, but lambs are notoriously stupid under pressure, and the confused baby just would not take direction from the dog. After dog and lamb had run in circles for a couple of minutes, I gave Rialey to go ahead to "get it." That is Rialey's command to actually use her mouth and feet to catch a runaway animal.

This is certainly not something I would trust most dogs, even well trained herding dogs, to do without causing injury to their intended target so although I trust Ry not to intentionally harm the stock, I stayed as close as I could and kept a watchful eye for her herding drive to turn to prey drive or for her to get carried away and use too much force. After the "get it" command, Rialey had immediately switched tactics and started actually putting her mouth on the lamb. At a few weeks old, that little girl had some serious speed! I watched Ry trying to grab her very gently by the elbow, never putting enough pressure to cause injury. When she'd slowed the lamb enough, she would try to put her entire mouth around the back of the lamb's neck and press it to the ground.

Dakota was particularly keen to elude capture so neither of these techniques seemed to slow her enough for me to make the catch. Finally, Rialey reached under the running lamb and grabbed the opposite elbow, this caused the lamb to stumble. While I hustled up to catch her, Rialey gave the lamb one more good nose punch in the side which rolled her right into my hands! I checked her over quickly and found that though she was winded and scared, there wasn't a scratch on that baby. Rialey had used just enough force to take her down without causing a speck of injury! What a good dog!

Dakota in hand, Rialey, the lamb, and I finally went to join Big Onion and the rest of the flock where after catching our breath, we did our usual health checks on the flock. I'm happy to report that no one needed deworming and all the lambs were showing very good increases in weight.

That job finished, we all went back to check on Louise and her new baby. I knew the baby was little when I'd originally picked her up, but when we found her to be well under 5lbs we began to suspect that she might one of twins. Big Onion, Rialey, and I made our way back out across the bridge now on a mission to search for a potentially lost little newborn lamb. Rialey paused at the afterbirth still sitting wetly on the top of the hill hoping to make a second breakfast of the farm dog delicacy, but at one word from me, she left it where it sat and started sniffing around for the missing baby.

While we stomped around the tall grass losing hope at the amount of ground we'd have to cover to try and find a tiny and potentially dead baby sheep, Ry dropped her head and took off at a run to the back pasture. I figured she was just going for a run or perhaps wanted to take a quick dip in the ponds, but when I say her floof of a curled and fluffy tail come up, then her head pop up as if to say, "Hey guys! Come look!" I knew she was onto something. It took us a minute to catch up, but when we crossed the second bridge and rounded the corner, sure enough, our trusty farm dog girl had tracked her way straight to that baby and stood waiting with her until we could gather her up and bring her back to momma! On the way back, I told Rialey she was more than welcome to enjoy that placenta she'd left behind as a reward for all her great work that morning.

This lamb was also a ewe and was bigger and much more robust than her sister. Luckily, Louise accepted both lambs, and we watched as the two little girls both nursed from their mother. Rialey then helped to clean little lamb butts while Louise got a healthy pile of grain, some fresh hay, and clean bucket of water. Finally we left mother to bond and rest with her newborns and headed up to the house for a breakfast of our own!

Eve's new vegetable

Last year we put a breeding harness on our goat buck, Gimli, so we had a pretty darn good idea when the girls were going to kid. This year, I did make note of when we exposed all the various girls to our two boys, but didn't have exact dates when the deed occurred. This has made for some interesting speculation as to when the girls will decide to have their kids. Even after all these years and all these kids, the girls still manage to confound and confuse us. You can look at udders, check for swollen vulvas, and feel for loosened ligaments, but at this point, I'm pretty firmly convinced that the only way to know for sure if a doe is about to kid is if there's a little hoof sticking out of her backside! 

We had been waiting and watching Eve for a couple weeks sure every night that the next morning we'd find her snuggled up with a new kid or two. No dice. So one day when I was out on the lanai putting in a load of laundry and I saw the girl standing oddly and squatting in the middle of the pasture, I had the thought that maybe, finally it was her time. Then I heard her. Eve is normally a very quiet goat, but the yell she let out let me know something was absolutely happening! 

I ran back inside yelling at Big Onion that I thought Eve was in labor as I flew past, threw on my boots and sped out the back door! 

 By the time we'd reached her, Eve was standing in the middle of the pasture with a soggy little red thing at her feet. As to why Eve chose to give birth in the middle of the pasture instead of inside the safety and security of one of our many buildings on a sunny, but very chilly day, my only guess is that Eve has some pretty significant rear end weakness. We think she was injured by another goat (Josie!) when she was young and suffered some spinal damage. She gets around just fine, but watching her closely and it's pretty obvious that the girl doesn't have full function or feeling back there. Best guess is that labor just snuck up on her before she could find an appropriate spot to do it!

I ran inside and quickly grabbed a couple towels. We got the little girl as dry as possible and before we knew it she was up on her feet and trying her best to nurse.

Unfortunately, trying to nurse while you are a soggy, wobbly, one hour old infant kid is not the easiest of tasks, especially when your mother doesn't have the good sense to hold still long enough for you to find and latch onto your target. Big Onion ended up grabbing a cupful of grain just to keep Eve distracted and still long enough for her little girl to get fed.

The poor thing kept trying and just totally missing her mom's teat, but the instinct is strong in these little ones and this doeling was not going to give up.

Finally she found her goal and figured out how to get it in her mouth. We all breathed a sigh of relief as the little one had her first meal.

Her belly full, it was time to move mother and daughter to a more secure location so that they could bond properly and get some rest in peace.

I've mentioned before on this blog how baby sheep and their mothers react to being carried. Basically the lamb goes limp and decides that today might as well be a good day to die while mother, as soon as the lamb rises more than a a few inches above the ground, ceases to recognize the thing as her child at all and generally decides her lamb as vanished into thin air even if the thing is right in front of her face!

Well, let me tell you that baby goats could not be more different. Pick up a newborn goat and it is going to yell and scream and kick its little heart out. Meanwhile mom is probably going to be trying to mess you up or at least get as close as possible to her distressed little one.

This little one was not pleased with being made to "fly" across the pasture and she let us know it in no uncertain terms! Meanwhile, her mother practically crawled up my backside to stay near to her little one.

Soon we had Eve and her kid tucked into a cozy pen with lots of hay for mom to munch on and baby to snuggle down for her first nap in the big, new world. The proud father, Gimli, looked on from the pen next door.

We decided to call this little blue eyed darling Rutabaga since she reminds us so much of her older sister, Turnip. She actually already has a new home lined up where her name will most likely be Mayberry so we've been compromising and calling the girl Rudy-May at least for now. She a little spitfire full of sass and attitude with the other goats, but still just as sweet as can be with us. At the time of this posting, Rudy-May is a little over a month old and doing great!

Finding our Jane Doe

It was just a normal morning. Big Onion and I had to work so we both dragged ourselves out of bed before dawn, bundled up against the freezing temps, and headed out for morning chores in the frosty dark.

Groggily, I fed each of the rabbits, refilled their hay and water then set to work milking our two new momma goats, Eve and Amelia, while Big Onion busied himself feeding the poultry and the rest of the goat herd.

I was just finishing up feeding Amelia when I heard Big Onion calling to Rialey. She wasn't with me in the milk room which was odd in itself. Even weirder that she wasn't with him either. A few minutes later, he peeked his head in the milk room to tell me that Rialey was running back and forth along the pasture fence while a wild cotton-tailed rabbit was just sort of sitting there looking at her.

I finished up with the girls then followed him around the back of the poultry pens to see Rialey running up and down the fence line and making the whining, yelping sounds of a very upset farmdog. We spent a moment amazed at how calm the rabbit was acting despite the crazed dog and gawking humans standing less than 10 feet away. We tried to explain to Rialey that not all rabbits are hers and called her away to go and quickly check on the sheep before heading in.

On the way back from our visit with the sheep, we saw that same rabbit. This time it was hopping around the goat yard. It only took a second for us to realize that that wild rabbit was looking way too fat and fluffy. Right then it hit me. Jane (Jane Doe, ha ha) had been working on a small hole in the back corner of her pen for a while. When I fed her, I assumed she was just hiding in the small crate we keep in the rabbits' pens to make them feel more like they have a den in which to hide.

One quick glance into the pen, and I confirmed that that "cotton tail" we had been oo'ing and ahh'ing over in the neighbor's field was in fact our very own, very pregnant rabbit on the loose. No wonder Rialey had been throwing such an unholy fit! One of "her" bunnies was out of place!

I quickly put Rialey out of sight so that she wouldn't give chase and stress out the poor mother bunny any more than necessary then grabbed the fishing net we keep on hand for just this occasion. Big Onion and I managed to herd the doe into the milk room where she hid under the shelving there. Rabbits have surprisingly poor vision so I placed the net over one opening while Big Onion shooed Jane in my direction. In just a few minutes, she had hopped her way right into the net where I was able to scoop her up and into my arms.

We got her settled with fresh food, water, and hay in an empty pen until we could repair her escape hole then had a hardy laugh at ourselves as we finally headed back up to the house for not being able to tell the difference between a fat rabbit and a wild hare in the early morning light. Next time maybe we'll actually listen to the dog!

Lambing Season is here!

  Earlier in the evening our big, woolly ewe, Whoopi, had given birth to a ram lamb who we decided to call Degas. When we found him, he was soaking wet and looking chilly so when temps dropped into the thirties, I decided to make a late night check on him and to see if any of our other sheep had decided to lamb. Of course I had my trusty farm dog, Rialey, at my side.

  I shined a flashlight into the darkness and saw the reflection of the eyes of most of the flock standing in a bunch near the poultry pens. Scanning with my light, I caught a gleam halfway across the field near one of the rabbit tractors, then a little sparkle down close to the ground. Someone else had lambed!

  I hurried to the poultry house and flicked on the lights to see it was Bonnie standing off by herself with a little white ball of fluff on the ground at her feet. Bonnie has a history of abandoning her lambs so I knew there was no way I was going to leave her out with that little baby on a cold night.

  Swinging into action, I cleared out the milk room of some indignant lady goats and grabbed our lamb sling, a makeshift leash (half of a tie down strap) and put Rialey in a stay. I slowly tried to approach momma, but she beat hooves and headed for the rest of the flock, baby in tow. I caught up with the little one, scooped it up, and very quickly transferred it to the lamb sling.

  Sheep are funny creatures. For some reason, if you pick up a lamb, momma will have no clue what happened to her baby and start frantically searching as if the little thing had suddenly vanished into thin air. The lamb sling, a simple loop of plastic, lets the sheep see her lamb again. As long as it is held close to the ground, momma will almost always follow the lamb wherever you want. The other advantage of using the swing is lambs tend to go completely limp when carried for any length of time. It's like they are thinking, "Well, the predator has got me. Might as well die now." When you put them down after being carried, it always takes a while for them to come back to themselves. The sling keeps the babies coherent and calling for mom. Like I said, sheep are very odd creatures.

  Anyway, I got the lamb in the sling and eventually caught Bonnie's collar and with one hand secured her with the hook from the strap. With me and little lamby in the front and Rialey bringing up the rear, we were able to get mother and child safely tucked away in a cozy room. I set Bonnie up with water, hay, and a little feed then pinned her to the wall while she ate to make sure both her teats were clear and both sides of her udder were producing. All that done, I gathered baby again and found that Bonnie had had her first little girl. Using the sling and a small fish scale, I found the girl was a very respectable 8.4lbs. Later we decided on the name Dora for the girl.

  With Bonnie and her little eweling all settled in, I started to head back to the house only to realize that I hadn't yet checked on Whoopi and Degas. The little ram lamb was up and spunky. He was warm and dry with a full belly and a clean rear end. Whoopi had passed her placenta in the pen, so I called Rialey in to retrieve it (a rare and much prized treat for the farm dog) while Whoopi did her best to shield her little one from the wolf-beast and stomped for all she was worth. Ry backed her up, grabbed the placenta, and happily brought her prize back up to the house for a late night snack!

Selling Victor and Bruno

Just about a year ago, our big LaMancha doe gave birth to twin bucklings. I decided to name them Victor and Bruno. We let the boys stay with their momma nursing all day and closed them up at night so that we could milk her in the mornings. When they got to be a few months old, we weaned the boys from their mother and started trying to sell them. I listed them all over Craigslist and Facebook. I put out feelers everywhere. No one was interested. I relisted them every couple months, dropping the price and rewording the adds each time. No luck at all. Being intact, having horns, and having grown out of the "cute kid" stage were all strikes against them.

With kidding season just around the corner, I decided to list them one more time about a week ago. I dropped the price once again and listed them everywhere I could think. Within 5 minutes of listing, I had people coming out of the woodwork wanting these boys! In less than 24 hours, I had at least 15 different people contact me (sometimes repeatedly) about buying them. Maybe I dropped the price too much? Maybe it was just timing and luck. Who knows! All I know is that although I am going to miss their sweet faces, at least we have two less mouths to feed!

Rialey practicing her duck herding

  Below is a video I took one night during evening chores. I went into the duck pen to change our their always gross water. I asked Rialey to come in with me to help keep the birds out of my way. Tonight she decided to practice moving the flock while I dumped, rinsed, and refilled the buckets. 

  I will allow this kind of behavior as long as it is under my supervision, and the dog and stock remain calm. I think this kind of doodling with the stock is the way that herding dogs learn how the stock move in response to their pressure and movement. I watched Luna do it many times and every time she would seem to come away with some new knowledge about how to better handle the stock. I also think it is very interesting to watch Rialey create then solve problems, split them apart them put them back together again and move then into and then out of the enclosed area calmly.

**You may want to turn down your speakers for this video. Ducks and geese are loud beasties. Also, please excuse the mud. With rain almost every day, there's not a lot we can do about it until the weather dries a bit, and I assure you that the waterfowl in this pen do not mind a bit. (Plus they spend most of their time free ranging in the somewhat drier pastures.)

Chicken Surgery

  This year has been really bad for us with predators. It seems every time we dispatch one, another shows up. Every time we secure one pen, something finds a way into another. Something is picking off our poultry, and nothing we do seems to stop it. We are not in a place right now to get a livestock guardian animal, but the possibility has been discussed at length. Right now, we believe we are battling a fox who likes to tunnel into the poultry pens and make off with our birds in the night. It even made off with our beloved little Cynthia.

  One morning a few weeks ago, Rialey was keying in on one chicken, a little silver laced wyandotte hen. She seemed to have a number of loose feathers on her chest, but she was running around with the rest of the birds and eating normally so I didn't think much of it. That evening again Rialey pointed out this hen and tried to make it clear to me that she had a problem that needed my attention.

  When I finally got my hands on the girl after she gave me quite the run for my money, I took a good look at her chest. It was bad. Way worse than I expected considering how normal she was acting. Something had ripped away the skin on her neck and chest and part of her crop was torn open. The crop (sometimes called the croop or craw) is a small, muscular sac that connects the esophagus to the rest of the bird's digestive track. It is where chickens store food that is waiting to be digested. I could actually see part of the corn that this hen had for breakfast through the hole in her chest.

Not having it in me to put down such an active, seemingly normal bird, I set her up in a pen inside the poultry house with her own food and water. I was hoping that perhaps she could heal enough to close up the hole and be ok. The next morning we noticed that she had drunk her entire waterer and when we refilled it, she started chugging down the water again. After watching her for a few minutes we realized that while feed seemed to be staying in, all the water this poor hen tried to drink would just dribble out the hole in her neck. Despite this, our girl was still full of life. I mixed up some vitamin water and syringed it directly into her crop then Big Onion held her upright for a while so that the liquid would be absorbed.

That night since the hen was still seemed bright and active we decided it was time to take action. Again we didn't want to put down a bird who was obviously so full of the will to live. We decided the best solution would be to try and close that hole. If they can avoid infection, chickens can heal from a surprising amount of surface tissue damage, but this girl would certainly dehydrate and die if she couldn't keep in the fluids. We did a little research and gathered supplies and prepared to do some at home surgery.

Big Onion wrapped the hen in a towel and settled down on the bathroom floor. I started by cleaning the whole area as best I could of the crusted blood and food then scrubbed it with a surgical solution. There was a lot of excess tissue so first I trimmed away anything that looked like it was already dying. This caused a bit of bleeding, but we applied pressure and she clotted nicely. Since the torn edge of the crop had already started healing, I trimmed away a little bit of tissue to encourage it to close back on itself. Luckily I had some old suture material squirreled away for just such an occasion so I set to work stitching the hole closed with small, close together stitches. Working for the vet, I had some experience assisting with sutures, but this was my first time really trying to close something so big.

Here are a couple pictures before and after the surgery. WARNING: These are pretty graphic!

Through all this, our patient never flinched, moved, or made a sound. In fact at one point she fell asleep. We had to rouse her to make sure she was still with us, but she woke alert and clear eyed. Once the wound was totally closed, I cleaned up the area and trimmed away a bit more of the dead tissue. We gave the girl an antibiotic shot to hopefully stave off infection and brought her back out to her pen. Once back outside she started immediately eating and drinking, and to our delight she did not spring a leak! The final job wasn't pretty, and she was still missing a lot of skin on her neck and chest, but if this girl wanted to fight, we might as well give her a fighting chance.

Chickens can be amazingly resilient creatures so we are keeping our finders crossed for this gal's smooth recovery. We don't often name our poultry, but we decided that our brave patient deserved a name. We decided to call her Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas character with all the stitches. Tis the season and all that.

So far Sally has been healing nicely with no signs of infection setting in. She's eating and drinking and patiently letting us inspect the wound twice a day. We'll probably give her one more shot of antibiotics and keep her contained until that area does a lot more healing.  Hopefully some day in the not too far off future, we'll be putting her back out with the flock to do her chicken-y thing!

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Update: I wrote this post shortly after we did the surgery on Sally but never got around to uploading the pictures or posting it. It's been a couple weeks, and I'm happy to report that Sally is doing wonderfully. As I said above, chickens can sometimes heal from surprising amounts of damage and Sally is certainly proving this to be true. We still have her caged, but we've moved her to a bigger enclosure with perch bars and a good view of her friends outside. The wound is almost completely gone with just one spot of scar tissue still sticking out the hole. We've been reluctant to put the girl back out with the group as chickens will pick at anything out of the ordinary on another bird. Plus it is still ridiculously muddy out there. Right now, Sally's biggest problem is that she's mad at being cooped up for so long. For a chicken who literally had her neck ripped open, this is pretty good problem to have!

Here is a picture of the almost totally healed area. What a difference!