Month: August 2018

Thursday’s Child
(Written April 6, 2018)

Last Saturday, Lulu, one of our ewes, had a lamb that I named Thursday’s Child. She was the last lamb of the season. All the others were at least a week old, and they pretty much knew the lay of the land already. They were at the romping stage. This lamb was born late in the afternoon, in farthest part of our pasture, what we call “The Way Back,” and when the flock saw me carrying a grain bucket, they all came running. Except for Lulu. She hung back. When a ewe first has a lamb, she will separate herself from the others for a while, maybe a day.

I walked back to check on them, it was a couple hundred yards, and when I got there, things looked a little strange. Lulu hadn’t completely cleaned the placenta off the lamb and she seemed confused. I wanted the two of them to get back into the main pasture, which is more secure against coyotes and other predators, so I picked up the lamb, still wet, and tried to get Lulu to follow. Lulu kept acting like she was drunk. Looking around for her lamb, she’d come forward a few steps and then run back and bawl for a while. We did that all the way to the pasture. I got her up to the Sheep Shack where she was laying on some straw and doing fine. Then we took a video, which I posted, and then about 10 minutes later she started having contractions again.

In a normal lamb birth, the first thing you see is lips—it’s kind of freaky, actually. Alien-looking. It’s lips, then a snout, then you want to see a little section of cream-colored hoof, which means they are coming out the right way. It takes a while, especially for the first birth, but soon you will see a deep purple tongue hanging out of the inch or so of mouth that’s sticking out of the womb, and then you’re certain the lamb is dead because that tongue just ain’t right. But it’s not dead, it’s just a droopy purple tongue. Half an hour later, when you’re already digging the grave in your imagination, the head makes its through the birth canal, and the lamb slides out and plops down on the ground. Within a minute, it’s on its feet and Ma is licking it clean. It’s an amazing thing to watch. Goats are the same, only difference is the color.

When Lulu went into labor again last Saturday, it didn’t look right. She was pushing hard and when the lamb finally emerged it was breach, still wrapped in the placenta, and dead, of course. I helped her push it out, since the head was the last part to come, and after that she expelled her uterus, the whole damned thing. It hung out behind her, inverted, about the size of a football.

It’s called a prolapsed uterus. I had read about it, but never seen one. We’ve had three or four dozen lamb and goat births since we started this adventure, and this was the first real trouble we’ve had. The first time a mother was in danger.

While I tried to keep Lulu stable and as comfortable as a creature can be when her private parts are hanging out, I sent Vanessa to the house to get the sheep book, which turned out to be useless. So I did what we all do in times of uncertainty now-a-days, I Googled. ‘Prolapsed uterus in sheep’ on my iPhone, right out there in the pasture, still trying to keep Lulu calm and the baby alive. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay. We’re gonna take care of you.” Little white lies.

“Call the vet,” Vanessa said.

“It’s five-thirty on Saturday. They’re closed,” I said.

“Maybe they have an emergency number.”

OMG, they did. In about 30 minutes, Dr. Bates was there. Dr. Bates is amazing. I absolutely mean that. She’s 5’2” and maybe 110 pounds, and she is fearless. She brought her husband to help wrangle Lulu, who had been getting up occasionally and wandering around the pasture, lamb at her teat, womb dangling behind her, me at her head, trying to keep her still.

Dr. Bates’ first goal was to put the uterus back where it belongs, and she worked at that for about half an hour or so. Lulu was still awake, of course, no one thought to bring an anesthesiologist. So I parked myself in front of Lulu, and I had her in a headlock, while Dr. Bates’ husband straddled her (Lulu, not Dr. Bates) and the two of us managed to keep her (again, Lulu, not Dr. Bates) more or less immobile. Vanessa’s job was to hold Thursday’s Child and provide a blow-by-blow account of the actions in the back.

At one point, Lulu decided to lunge forward, and she knocked me on my back. Later, Dr. Bates said she was worried Lulu would step on my glasses. I was more worried about the bridge of my nose.

The most intriguing thing was that Dr. Bates brought a 5-pound bag of sugar to rub all over the uterus to try to get the swelling down. It did get the swelling down, and she managed to untangle all of the after-birth from the uterus, but in the end it didn’t work. Every time she’d push a little uterus flesh back in, Lulu would expel it again.

So she did an emergency field hysterectomy. I won’t describe that. I didn’t see it, but when I tried to unlock my knees after an hour of holding Lulu in a headlock, I wished again for the anesthesiologist.

The Husband and I carried Lulu, by the legs, swinging upside down, into to the barn and to a small pen we have there for just such a situation. We kept her and Thursday’s Child in that pen for three days until the stitches seemed to be healing. For a couple of days, we didn’t know if Lulu would make it. She just stared a lot, and slept. Poor girl. Thursday’s Child was confused, slept beside her mama, occasionally tried to play. By Tuesday, though, Lulu was eating well, and by Wednesday, the sun came out and they were both ready to rejoin the flock. I went to the Vet’s office and paid the bill on Thursday. It was a lot. And worth every penny.

When I first saw Lulu and her new lamb in the Way Back last Saturday, I was listening to a song by Sam Baker, my new favorite Texan songwriter. The song is called “Thursday,” and it’s about a woman who has as many babies as she has ex’s. Clearly, she has not managed her life very well. The song ends with the nursery rhyme.

Monday’s child is fair of face
Tuesdays’ child is full of grace
Wednesday’s child is full of woe
Thursday’s child….

(Written August 7, 2018)

Some days the farm is idyllic. Since the barn is on top of the hill, the highest point on the property, and the rear door faces west, the sunsets there are wonderful, especially when it’s partly cloudy. On those days, after we feed, I generally linger a while and watch the sun go down. It is a peaceful end to a satisfying day.

Then there are days like today. For context, we have spent a week or more nursing three sickly goat babies. They have been lethargic, barely eating (and losing weight as a result), walking around as if in a daze and, last (for emphasis) suffering diarrhea. (Goats with loose bowels are not fun.) The symptoms could be caused by parasites—goats are prone to worms—or just a virus, sort of a caprine summer cold. Anyway, we gave them worm medicine and have been giving them daily doses of vitamins to get their red blood count back up. All of this is done by drench. A drench is a syringe with a pencil-sized, blunt steel tube instead of a needle. The idea is that one of us (me) holds the goat while the other (Vanessa) squirts the contents down the goat‘s throat. The goats, of course, have other ideas. They squirm, they fight, they spit. We try to get enough of the contents down the goat‘s throat to achieve the desired result. And it is working. The babies are getting better—eating more, gaining weight, getting livelier.

Then this morning, when we fed, I saw that Buck, the sire, was having trouble walking. His hind legs were wobbling, bad, and he was having trouble standing. It was like he was good and drunk. It was worrisome.

I cannot overstate the importance of Buck to our whole operation. He was in the first set of goats we got. Along with Clara and Clover, he is a founding member. He is the only male source of genetic goat material (goat jism) we have. We bottle fed him when we first got him, and he is part of the family. If you have ever had a dog that you loved, but that stunk really bad, especially in the autumn, that’s Buck. In my head, I could never stop farming as long as Buck is here. (I feel the same about Clara and Clover, but this post is about Buck).

I called the vet and arranged for a farm visit in the afternoon. In the meantime, I got my teeth cleaned and inspected—I’d had the appointment for six months—and looked up the symptoms for “goats with weak back legs.” Turns out there is a thing called Meningeal Worm Infection. It comes from infected deer. The deer eat a parasite, it passes through them without any harm, then lands on something that the goat eats. It does not pass through the goat, however. It gets stuck in the spine and causes neurological problems—shakiness, weak hind quarters, plus skin lesions, etc., that Buck only has minimally.

The cure. Drenching. Just like with the babies, except instead of a 15 pound kid, which we are giving 6cc of vitamins, we are giving a 4-year old intact 170 pound male 50cc. 50cc is about the size of a Starbucks lotte.

He squirms, he fights, he spits.

I, on the other hand, wonder “Where the hell is my sunset?”