I moved to Taiwan in February of 2003. After just a few months, daytime temperatures were passing 30 degrees and I realized that summer had arrived. But what had happened to spring? We went straight from a damp, uncomfortable chill to a humid, oppressive heat. Perhaps the biggest thing I missed was the fresh smell that accompanies springtime in Canada. You know it: the smell of green busting out all over.
Well, now I live on a 200-acre farm and I can smell green (among other things) any time I want. I stand on my back porch at sunrise and just suck it in with a deep breath. It’s invigorating. Rejuvenating. Life-giving.
Unfortunately, I am not the only creature on the Fisher farm who loves the smell of all things green. Betty and Ginger, our cows, and their two wee calves, Tyson and Mocha, have been out on promenade every day, sniffing apple blossoms and nibbling new leaves along the fence line. Our recent attempts to contain the bovine brood to one field were dashed within hours of us raising the fence, as Ginger discovered that she was plenty heavy enough to just lean on the cedar rails and bust them all to pieces. The clacking of little calf hooves against wood could be heard over 50 acres away, notifying us at the farmhouse that our cows had escaped yet again to a greener pasture.
Perhaps they have been discussing the merits of marauding with Donkey, who has oft been found visiting the horses down the road on a dewy morning. Just last week, Farmer Fisher was heading off to work when he paused at the end of the lane to look both ways. He did a double-take as he noticed a familiar reddish-brown head bobbing beyond the lilacs on the other side of the road. There was Ginger, in the neighbour’s alfalfa. We are NOT going to be popular. She had already eaten her fill by the time the Farmer managed to shoo her back toward the barn. She stepped Ginger-ly over the fence she had broken on exit, and looked back over her shoulder with disdain at her captor as he repaired the damage.
Within minutes, she was out on another adventure, having broken an equally brittle fence down the field. This time, she had her best friend Betty and their two offspring in tow. The Farmer headed off to TSC to buy some barbed wire.
We had been warned last November when we bought the cows that they would be testing our fences at every opportunity. We raised and tightened the rails but cows aren’t really interested in breaking out of a resort where they are fed and watered daily. Unless, of course, there is a sweet-smelling crop growing on the other side of the fence. By the end of the summer, we’ll be surrounded by them. The scent of warm corn, beans and alfalfa will be impossible for our cattle to resist.
So, instead of settling in to watch the finals of American Idol, I wandered out to the back pasture to find my husband. He was up to his eyebrows in thorn bushes, trying to stretch a heavy coil of barbed wire along the cedar fence. I climbed in there and lent him a hand, and I only once hit myself in the head with a dead branch that was hanging low.
The cedar rails there in the shade of the trees are covered in a thick carpet of Kelly-green moss. It’s absolutely beautiful. The coyotes find it quite comfy, too, I guess, because their droppings are scattered all over the place. As we worked our way down the fence, we found remnants of barbed wire from decades past. In some places, the wire had been wound tightly around a young tree trunk that eventually grew and thickened around the wire, swallowing it whole.
Our farm, which is known as the original “Old MacDonald Farm”, was once a piggery, and more recently a nuttery (which, apparently, isn’t a real word but you get my drift). There was once a large variety of nut trees on the property, as evidenced by the shells strewn on the grown. Many of the trees were removed for some unknown reason, but a few unidentifiable species remain. Note to the reader: identification by licking the fruit of a nut tree is NOT recommended. The bitter sap oozing from said nut can put your tongue to sleep for hours, cause your throat to close up and send you running to dial the poison hot line.
Apparently, neither a pig farm nor a nut farm poses a need for strong fencing. We pretty much have to start from scratch. And I do mean scratch. By the end of this weekend, I expect to be covered in my very own kind of barbed wire tattoos.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
On Holiday...?
Just as I was filing my last column, Big Betty decided to follow Ginger’s lead and had a calf of her own. I guess she was pregnant after all, and not just extremely fat. She hadn’t grown much of an udder, so we weren’t convinced there was a baby in there. On Saturday morning, just as the men were coming in from their wild turkey hunt, Farmer Fisher noticed two feet sticking out of Betty’s behind. He gave them a light tug and swoosh! Out came a beautiful brown bull calf with a white face mask just like his mama’s. The Farmer christened him “Tyson”.
Tyson likes to lie about in the sunbeams all morning, like a lazy teenager. Betty is new at this motherhood thing herself, and still has enough of a sweet tooth to be lured away from her maternal duties by the call of the sweet feed hitting the feeder. It was funny to watch her raiding the lambs’ grain supply, then wandering off into the meadow, happy, satisfied, and calfless.
“Betty!” I hollered after her. “Aren’t you forgettin’ something?” She turned and looked at me. Then, as Farmer Fisher would say, that one neuron she has in her brain fired off and reminded her that she had left her precious newborn in the barn, untended. She picked up her hooves and literally galloped to the barn, stopping at the door. When she let out a low “mooooo”, her little one shook the sleep off, struggled to his feet and mooed after her, out to the meadow.
All of our lambs are in the pasture now. It was getting awfully warm and smelly in that lambing room and the layers of manure and uneaten hay had piled up about three feet so that the lambs could just step over the barriers of their pens and fall four feet onto the concrete floor below. Some of the four-week lambs look pretty tiny out in that big pasture, so I’m still planning to go out there with a milk bottle every evening, for the next little while. They are with their mothers until they are old enough to wean, but I still have some loyal customers who run across the field when they see me and my canvas liquor bag chock full o’ bottles.
Donkey is an ongoing problem, but without him we would definitely lose lambs to coyotes on the prowl. We often have visitors to the farm on the weekend, and when they walk past Donkey without so much as a “howdy-do”, he gets mighty jealous. Last weekend he decided to push on the door to the shed until it opened. Then he led all 35 of the ewes into our front yard. Some of them went straight for the long bales in the front field. Others went for the bright colours of the tulips in my front flower bed. They must have been out there for some time when I pointed them out to my husband.
“Um…are there supposed to be sheep in the front yard?” (I know, I’m brilliant sometimes.) The Farmer assured me that no, they were not supposed to be there, and went to get his trusty sheepdog, Chelsea.
Now, Chelsea is more than a bit nuts. All day long she runs in circles thinking, “herd the sheep, herd the sheep, herd the sheep…” When someone makes the mistake of walking too closely to her, they might get themselves herded, with a quick nip to the ankle. That doesn’t make her the most popular of the farm animals, but we surely are grateful for her assistance at times like these. I don’t know what we would have done without her. The farmer put her on her leash, led her out to where the sheep were calmly grazing on the front meadow, and let her work. Within minutes she had every one of them in a tight group, shuffling toward the barnyard gate.
Donkey was a different story. He evaded being led back to the barnyard until Farmer Fisher rounded the corner of the house with a big stick. Then he kicked up his heels and took off for the gate.
It would seem as though life on the farm is going to get much quieter over the next few months, now that the sheep are out of the barn. Whatever will I do to occupy myself in the evenings? That’s a joke, of course. We have pens to shovel out: I wish someone would invent some sort of hydraulic shovel so that my husband’s back will be saved some pain. I have a vegetable garden to plant, and flower beds to weed. We need to take the canoes down to the creek for a paddle down our shoreline to see how it fared during the flood, and we need to have another look at our fence line for gaping holes.
Soon there will be an acre of grass to cut at least once a week, and a pool to clean. We have to assess the seasonal damage on the barn roof, and make repairs. Next week, our baby chicks arrive so we’ve been cleaning out the chicken coop for them. And each month, we have to herd the sheep and cattle into the chute for their preventative medicines and checkups.
I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface here. I haven’t even mentioned the housework when you live with a bunch of teenaged girls. There’s always plenty to keep you busy and tire you out so you sleep well, on the farm. But according to the Farmer, we’re pretty much on holiday.
The Accidental Farmwife would like to thank those readers who took the time to write letters or to stop her in the post office with their comments about her stories. This column is a lot of fun to write, and I’m glad you enjoy reading it.
Tyson likes to lie about in the sunbeams all morning, like a lazy teenager. Betty is new at this motherhood thing herself, and still has enough of a sweet tooth to be lured away from her maternal duties by the call of the sweet feed hitting the feeder. It was funny to watch her raiding the lambs’ grain supply, then wandering off into the meadow, happy, satisfied, and calfless.
“Betty!” I hollered after her. “Aren’t you forgettin’ something?” She turned and looked at me. Then, as Farmer Fisher would say, that one neuron she has in her brain fired off and reminded her that she had left her precious newborn in the barn, untended. She picked up her hooves and literally galloped to the barn, stopping at the door. When she let out a low “mooooo”, her little one shook the sleep off, struggled to his feet and mooed after her, out to the meadow.
All of our lambs are in the pasture now. It was getting awfully warm and smelly in that lambing room and the layers of manure and uneaten hay had piled up about three feet so that the lambs could just step over the barriers of their pens and fall four feet onto the concrete floor below. Some of the four-week lambs look pretty tiny out in that big pasture, so I’m still planning to go out there with a milk bottle every evening, for the next little while. They are with their mothers until they are old enough to wean, but I still have some loyal customers who run across the field when they see me and my canvas liquor bag chock full o’ bottles.
Donkey is an ongoing problem, but without him we would definitely lose lambs to coyotes on the prowl. We often have visitors to the farm on the weekend, and when they walk past Donkey without so much as a “howdy-do”, he gets mighty jealous. Last weekend he decided to push on the door to the shed until it opened. Then he led all 35 of the ewes into our front yard. Some of them went straight for the long bales in the front field. Others went for the bright colours of the tulips in my front flower bed. They must have been out there for some time when I pointed them out to my husband.
“Um…are there supposed to be sheep in the front yard?” (I know, I’m brilliant sometimes.) The Farmer assured me that no, they were not supposed to be there, and went to get his trusty sheepdog, Chelsea.
Now, Chelsea is more than a bit nuts. All day long she runs in circles thinking, “herd the sheep, herd the sheep, herd the sheep…” When someone makes the mistake of walking too closely to her, they might get themselves herded, with a quick nip to the ankle. That doesn’t make her the most popular of the farm animals, but we surely are grateful for her assistance at times like these. I don’t know what we would have done without her. The farmer put her on her leash, led her out to where the sheep were calmly grazing on the front meadow, and let her work. Within minutes she had every one of them in a tight group, shuffling toward the barnyard gate.
Donkey was a different story. He evaded being led back to the barnyard until Farmer Fisher rounded the corner of the house with a big stick. Then he kicked up his heels and took off for the gate.
It would seem as though life on the farm is going to get much quieter over the next few months, now that the sheep are out of the barn. Whatever will I do to occupy myself in the evenings? That’s a joke, of course. We have pens to shovel out: I wish someone would invent some sort of hydraulic shovel so that my husband’s back will be saved some pain. I have a vegetable garden to plant, and flower beds to weed. We need to take the canoes down to the creek for a paddle down our shoreline to see how it fared during the flood, and we need to have another look at our fence line for gaping holes.
Soon there will be an acre of grass to cut at least once a week, and a pool to clean. We have to assess the seasonal damage on the barn roof, and make repairs. Next week, our baby chicks arrive so we’ve been cleaning out the chicken coop for them. And each month, we have to herd the sheep and cattle into the chute for their preventative medicines and checkups.
I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface here. I haven’t even mentioned the housework when you live with a bunch of teenaged girls. There’s always plenty to keep you busy and tire you out so you sleep well, on the farm. But according to the Farmer, we’re pretty much on holiday.
The Accidental Farmwife would like to thank those readers who took the time to write letters or to stop her in the post office with their comments about her stories. This column is a lot of fun to write, and I’m glad you enjoy reading it.
And Mocha makes Three!
We had a big surprise when we got home from work the other day. Farmer Fisher couldn’t see Ginger out in the field with big Betty, so he went looking for her. He found her in the barn, standing protectively beside her new baby calf. After we had worried for weeks about how to prepare ourselves for the wonderment of calf birthing, she just pulled it off by herself. Annie named the new brown calf “Mocha”.
The Farmer penned cow and calf into the portion of the barn that they had chosen, and gave Ginger an extra portion of sweet feed.
Betty was not impressed. She was standing beside the hay feeder outside, looking lost and lonely. She couldn’t figure out why her friend wasn’t joining her on her late afternoon jaunt to the back of the pasture. Finally I lured her into the barn with some sweet feed, offered on an upturned garbage can lid.
“Look, Betty! Ginger has a surprise…” I stepped away so that Betty could see into Ginger’s pen. But she wasn’t looking at the new calf. All she could see was that Ginger had a fresh pile of new hay and a huge pile of sweetfeed. She didn’t seem interested in the new addition at all, and wandered back out of the barn for the night. If cows can sulk, I swear that’s what she was doing.
The next morning, I went to the barn to find that Ginger had busted out of her makeshift pen and was trying to get her calf to follow. Donkey saw that the pen gate was open and took the opportunity to venture in for any leftover sweetfeed or hay. He noticed the calf then, and wandered closer for a sniff.
That ticked Ginger off. For the first time since she had arrived last November, I heard my cow utter a low “moo”. Donkey backed away from the calf and out of the pen. I tried to close the gate after the cow, but she managed to wiggle past me. All of those warnings about getting between a cow and her calf passed through my mind, and I hopped over the fence into the next pen.
Within minutes, the two cows were headed down the field at a clip, with the one-day-old calf trotting along between them. Farmer Fisher came out of the house and stood on the porch, with his hands on his hips.
“Now that’s not exactly what I wanted, is it?” he muttered. We had planned to keep the calf in the barn with her mama for the first few days, so that we could get a good look at it (at this point we didn’t even know for sure if it was male or female) and so that it would be safe from hungry coyotes. But there they were, on Day 2, running out toward the second pasture.
I worried about the calf all day while I was at work. When we got home, the Farmer and I hopped on the ATV and took off down the field, in the direction of Betty and Ginger. “She’ll hide that calf in a thicket and leave it there for the day,” the Farmer said.
After circling the cows once, we went back into the first field and spotted Mocha. She was deep inside the thorn bushes, curled up in a chocolate-coloured ball beside the stone fence. She opened her eyes and blinked at us. I wanted her to come out and get something to drink. She must have been hot and dry, lying in that sun all day. We called her, but she wouldn’t move. She just stared at the two crazy humans who were trying to lure her out of the bush with clucking noises and whistles.
Farmer Fisher eventually had to crawl into the razor bush to guide her out. My husband will have to wear long sleeves for the next week or so. He looks as though he was in a scratching fight with a wildcat, and lost.
We stood there for a moment and watched as the young calf searched for a teat under her mother’s chin. I began to question the information I had read on the Internet about cows being intelligent.
The cows watched closely as we built a temporary fence to keep them in the first pasture. They may not be happy about having their wandering restricted, but at least they will be safe from Wile E. Coyote.
We were sitting on the back porch, enjoying the sunset when suddenly the three cows went rippin’ down the field, with Donkey in hot pursuit. He gnashed his teeth against the side of the calf and when Ginger tried to head-butt him, he chased her over the fence.
Apparently Donkey is somewhat jealous of our new addition and the attention that she receives. It would seem that the coyote is the least of our worries at the moment.
Farmer Fisher lured the cows with sweet feed, and penned them into the barnyard with the newly weaned lambs.
I can’t help feeling that we are restricting the cows from going to their favourite grazing grounds. Donkey wins the pasture, out of sheer nastiness. And the worst part of the situation is that he will likely get bored without the cows around, and take to biting the sheep again, for fun. The saga continues.
Last week, Farmer Fisher sheared the ewes and separated them from the lambs, a fact of which I’m sure our neighbours are keenly aware. The first two nights, the lambs cried for their mothers until they were tired and hoarse. The ewes wandered around on the other side of the barn, peeking through holes in the barnboard and answering their babies’ calls. They looked so sad, with their shaggy new haircuts. By the third night, the lambs had all found their water supply and comfortable beds in the hay. Now when I bring them bottles, they just chew holes in the nipples and baaaaa at me. They don’t need me anymore.
My job as wet nurse to 70 lambs is nearly done, for this year. As I look out at the fat leaping bundles of wool, I think I’ve done a pretty good job for my first season as a Farmwife.
-30-
The Farmer penned cow and calf into the portion of the barn that they had chosen, and gave Ginger an extra portion of sweet feed.
Betty was not impressed. She was standing beside the hay feeder outside, looking lost and lonely. She couldn’t figure out why her friend wasn’t joining her on her late afternoon jaunt to the back of the pasture. Finally I lured her into the barn with some sweet feed, offered on an upturned garbage can lid.
“Look, Betty! Ginger has a surprise…” I stepped away so that Betty could see into Ginger’s pen. But she wasn’t looking at the new calf. All she could see was that Ginger had a fresh pile of new hay and a huge pile of sweetfeed. She didn’t seem interested in the new addition at all, and wandered back out of the barn for the night. If cows can sulk, I swear that’s what she was doing.
The next morning, I went to the barn to find that Ginger had busted out of her makeshift pen and was trying to get her calf to follow. Donkey saw that the pen gate was open and took the opportunity to venture in for any leftover sweetfeed or hay. He noticed the calf then, and wandered closer for a sniff.
That ticked Ginger off. For the first time since she had arrived last November, I heard my cow utter a low “moo”. Donkey backed away from the calf and out of the pen. I tried to close the gate after the cow, but she managed to wiggle past me. All of those warnings about getting between a cow and her calf passed through my mind, and I hopped over the fence into the next pen.
Within minutes, the two cows were headed down the field at a clip, with the one-day-old calf trotting along between them. Farmer Fisher came out of the house and stood on the porch, with his hands on his hips.
“Now that’s not exactly what I wanted, is it?” he muttered. We had planned to keep the calf in the barn with her mama for the first few days, so that we could get a good look at it (at this point we didn’t even know for sure if it was male or female) and so that it would be safe from hungry coyotes. But there they were, on Day 2, running out toward the second pasture.
I worried about the calf all day while I was at work. When we got home, the Farmer and I hopped on the ATV and took off down the field, in the direction of Betty and Ginger. “She’ll hide that calf in a thicket and leave it there for the day,” the Farmer said.
After circling the cows once, we went back into the first field and spotted Mocha. She was deep inside the thorn bushes, curled up in a chocolate-coloured ball beside the stone fence. She opened her eyes and blinked at us. I wanted her to come out and get something to drink. She must have been hot and dry, lying in that sun all day. We called her, but she wouldn’t move. She just stared at the two crazy humans who were trying to lure her out of the bush with clucking noises and whistles.
Farmer Fisher eventually had to crawl into the razor bush to guide her out. My husband will have to wear long sleeves for the next week or so. He looks as though he was in a scratching fight with a wildcat, and lost.
We stood there for a moment and watched as the young calf searched for a teat under her mother’s chin. I began to question the information I had read on the Internet about cows being intelligent.
The cows watched closely as we built a temporary fence to keep them in the first pasture. They may not be happy about having their wandering restricted, but at least they will be safe from Wile E. Coyote.
We were sitting on the back porch, enjoying the sunset when suddenly the three cows went rippin’ down the field, with Donkey in hot pursuit. He gnashed his teeth against the side of the calf and when Ginger tried to head-butt him, he chased her over the fence.
Apparently Donkey is somewhat jealous of our new addition and the attention that she receives. It would seem that the coyote is the least of our worries at the moment.
Farmer Fisher lured the cows with sweet feed, and penned them into the barnyard with the newly weaned lambs.
I can’t help feeling that we are restricting the cows from going to their favourite grazing grounds. Donkey wins the pasture, out of sheer nastiness. And the worst part of the situation is that he will likely get bored without the cows around, and take to biting the sheep again, for fun. The saga continues.
Last week, Farmer Fisher sheared the ewes and separated them from the lambs, a fact of which I’m sure our neighbours are keenly aware. The first two nights, the lambs cried for their mothers until they were tired and hoarse. The ewes wandered around on the other side of the barn, peeking through holes in the barnboard and answering their babies’ calls. They looked so sad, with their shaggy new haircuts. By the third night, the lambs had all found their water supply and comfortable beds in the hay. Now when I bring them bottles, they just chew holes in the nipples and baaaaa at me. They don’t need me anymore.
My job as wet nurse to 70 lambs is nearly done, for this year. As I look out at the fat leaping bundles of wool, I think I’ve done a pretty good job for my first season as a Farmwife.
-30-
On the necessity of stubbornness
I have learned that, in addition to an unsinkable sense of optimism, one must also possess the stubbornness of a ram in order to be a sheep farmer. Luckily, I was born under the sign of the ram, I am a stubborn Aries, and I truly believe that because of that predestination, I am going to get the hang of this sheep farming thing yet.
When we had multiple lambs born to one mother, several times over, I asked the Farmer if we could feed baby bottles to supplement the mothers’ supply of milk. He said I could and so I have been in that barn every night with a canvas bag from the liquor store loaded with warm formula in lamb-feeding bottles. The lambs know me so well now, they swarm me and nibble at my boots or my hair or my knuckles – whatever they can reach – until I hand over the milk. I would like to think that I had something to do with so many of our lambs thriving this year. I’m quite proud of our little herd.
I realize that stubbornness and optimism must be balanced, however, with rational common sense. Lambs, if they survive gestation and birth, come into the world hoping that their mother has enough milk, that she accepts her obligation to feed them, and that conditions are favourable (i.e. not minus-30 in the barn). Even if warm and well-fed, the lambs might contract one of myriad diseases that sheep carry around with them, or they might just be born with a genetic “will to die” as a result of a lack of vitality passed on from their mother. Sometimes, no amount of bottle feeding will help, and you lose one. But occasionally, the extra effort put into caring for a weak one pays off.
Last week, I noticed that one of our newborns (probably about a month old) was walking in a rather stiff-legged fashion. The lamb looked alert and well-fed, and he didn’t have the wrinkled skin of dehydration or the hunched-over stance of starvation. He just walked like Charlie Chaplin.
The next day, he could hardly move at all. On the third day, he could no longer stand. His little legs would just collapse beneath him. Realizing that he couldn’t catch up to his mother to nurse, I tried to feed him a bottle. He couldn’t swallow, and choked on the milk. I must have had a rather distressed look on my face, as I rubbed his little back while he coughed. The Farmer had an idea. “We can feed him with a tube. Then he will either get better, or he won’t.” But at least he will have a full tummy, I thought. Stiff legs are a symptom of more than one disease known to lambs. In some cases, it’s caused by an overfeeding of grain, or bacteria growth in the intestines. This little piggy must have had more than his fair share at the feed trough.
We gave him about 75 mls of milk replacer once a day through a tube that he swallowed. It didn’t seem to be very much, but it was all he could handle in the time that we had to feed him. This routine carried on over the weekend. The Farmer gave him a shot of penicillin, and we hoped for the best.
On my 40th birthday (this was a big week for me), I went out to the barn to find the paralyzed lamb. Normally he is just a few feet from where I had placed him, having dragged himself over to a fresh patch of nibbling hay. But on this night, he wasn’t where I had left him. He was on the other side of the 20-foot “kindergarten” pen, looking at me and blinking. And he was standing up.
“Oh! My lamb is getting better!” I squealed. The Farmer came over to take a closer look. I tried to give him a bottle, but he choked on the milk. We fed him with a tube again, and I put him on the barn floor to see what would happen. Stiffly but surely, he walked away in search of his mother. I think he’s going to be okay.
That was a good birthday present. Almost as good as the diamond earrings that I got from Farmer Fisher. I’m going to be one well-dressed farmwife.The Accidental Farmwife doesn’t really know what she’s talking about, so if you would like to fill her in on some of the facts of farming, feel free to send her an email at: Diana.fisher@yahoo.ca
When we had multiple lambs born to one mother, several times over, I asked the Farmer if we could feed baby bottles to supplement the mothers’ supply of milk. He said I could and so I have been in that barn every night with a canvas bag from the liquor store loaded with warm formula in lamb-feeding bottles. The lambs know me so well now, they swarm me and nibble at my boots or my hair or my knuckles – whatever they can reach – until I hand over the milk. I would like to think that I had something to do with so many of our lambs thriving this year. I’m quite proud of our little herd.
I realize that stubbornness and optimism must be balanced, however, with rational common sense. Lambs, if they survive gestation and birth, come into the world hoping that their mother has enough milk, that she accepts her obligation to feed them, and that conditions are favourable (i.e. not minus-30 in the barn). Even if warm and well-fed, the lambs might contract one of myriad diseases that sheep carry around with them, or they might just be born with a genetic “will to die” as a result of a lack of vitality passed on from their mother. Sometimes, no amount of bottle feeding will help, and you lose one. But occasionally, the extra effort put into caring for a weak one pays off.
Last week, I noticed that one of our newborns (probably about a month old) was walking in a rather stiff-legged fashion. The lamb looked alert and well-fed, and he didn’t have the wrinkled skin of dehydration or the hunched-over stance of starvation. He just walked like Charlie Chaplin.
The next day, he could hardly move at all. On the third day, he could no longer stand. His little legs would just collapse beneath him. Realizing that he couldn’t catch up to his mother to nurse, I tried to feed him a bottle. He couldn’t swallow, and choked on the milk. I must have had a rather distressed look on my face, as I rubbed his little back while he coughed. The Farmer had an idea. “We can feed him with a tube. Then he will either get better, or he won’t.” But at least he will have a full tummy, I thought. Stiff legs are a symptom of more than one disease known to lambs. In some cases, it’s caused by an overfeeding of grain, or bacteria growth in the intestines. This little piggy must have had more than his fair share at the feed trough.
We gave him about 75 mls of milk replacer once a day through a tube that he swallowed. It didn’t seem to be very much, but it was all he could handle in the time that we had to feed him. This routine carried on over the weekend. The Farmer gave him a shot of penicillin, and we hoped for the best.
On my 40th birthday (this was a big week for me), I went out to the barn to find the paralyzed lamb. Normally he is just a few feet from where I had placed him, having dragged himself over to a fresh patch of nibbling hay. But on this night, he wasn’t where I had left him. He was on the other side of the 20-foot “kindergarten” pen, looking at me and blinking. And he was standing up.
“Oh! My lamb is getting better!” I squealed. The Farmer came over to take a closer look. I tried to give him a bottle, but he choked on the milk. We fed him with a tube again, and I put him on the barn floor to see what would happen. Stiffly but surely, he walked away in search of his mother. I think he’s going to be okay.
That was a good birthday present. Almost as good as the diamond earrings that I got from Farmer Fisher. I’m going to be one well-dressed farmwife.The Accidental Farmwife doesn’t really know what she’s talking about, so if you would like to fill her in on some of the facts of farming, feel free to send her an email at: Diana.fisher@yahoo.ca
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