When I checked the sheep this morning I noticed one lamb was really lame on it's front legs. He was hobbling about and looking quite sorry for himself. I didn't notice this yesterday but with animals can go bad pretty quick.
So when walking around them tonight I grabbed my can of purple spray and went to see if I could catch him.
No chance I thought.
Either he was slower than I thought or I was faster, but I managed to catch him. It involved the obligatory sliding on the grass as I got him though...
The picture was after I sprayed him, but he was sore between the cloves of his hooves so I'm happy I caught it early. I'll be picking up the foot bath from my dads later this week and running them through a couple of times over the weekend I think. Sheep and foot problems never end!
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| The wound sprayed up |
Then I came back to the house and shut the chickens in. The cockerel had obviously been a little too frisky when holding one of his girls down when he does his business. She had a large hole in the back of her head, it had stopped bleeding but it didn't look good. I know chickens will peck at anything that doesn't look normal or is another colour, so I decided that it was best to separate her off and put her in isolation until it's healed otherwise she'd be pecked to death in no time. Chicken can be quite cruel animals when they want to be!
Anyone else having any animal troubles lately?
touch wood all is fine, purple spray is great, if one needs it I find others want to join in the party, luckily ours are all fairly easy to catch and will come to food, makes it easy for me on my own :-)
ReplyDeleteYep! Chickens escaping because they (her singular) is the smallest of the flock and can squeeze through the fencing! Plus the older 3 hens making a racket when they find a newbie in the nest box! They are waking me at 5am to be let out, I try to get back to bed but, then the squabbles start.
ReplyDeleteI shelled out a fortune to buy a expensive brand of hen coop and run. (Reminds me, must do a review on it with some things they may not like). This particular coop has one nest box and as you know, hens like dark, warm and privacy when laying. 2 of the older hens have even started 'complaining' now when the other is in the nest box.I tried putting in a small washing up bowl in the coop area each morning, in the darkest end of the coop, away from the nest box but, none of them used it! The older hens were never this noisy last year!
I am so tired, have seriously been thinking of letting them go!
I once placed a lasso round a so called sick heifer and she dragged me round the field. I have seen some great home made holding pens made with farm gates and motorway crash barriers.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree chickens can be quite cruel to each other! Good you put her away from the others. I agree they would have probably pecked her to death. I love having them but I hate how mean they can be.Right now we have few animals so nothing much going on with them. Knock on wood.
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ReplyDeleteThat would be great on the seeds. :O)
Been having a fair amount of hoof problems with the sheep myself. It's been so wet they are getting no wear at all on the hooves and been constantly having to catch one and clip. Once it dries out the ground is usually hard enough to keep em worn. I also treated one lamb for bottle neck worms the other night. Watching all the others to see if they are going to need treating too. These wet conditions we been having are hell on sheep when it's also so warm.
ReplyDeleteyes we have had coccidiosis or the lambs have been a tense 10 days but all well now
ReplyDeleteNot at the moment, but have my eye out for fly strike. We are coming to that time of year.
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