Dairy Ramling : March 2011

This is Malibu, our dairy ewe:

      She lambed to what appeared to be 2 healthy ramlings one night. She had them all on her own without our intervention. We decided to leave the lambs on her for about 24 hours, then pull them and make them bottle babies, and use her milk to make yummy cheeses with. Well, that all changed about 5 hours after she had the lambs . . . 

     We noticed that one of the little ramlings was crying every now and then. Around here (since we have dealt with sick goats every now and then over the years) we call it the "death cry". He would moan and yell a little and then get quiet. He would stand up and was nursing on his mother. We checked her teats and she was full of colostrum. So, we waited and watched for a little while. About every 10 or 15 minutes, he would cry. I said to pull the lambs off and make them bottle babies sooner than our original plan. We got both of them hooked on the bottle pretty easily. I was hoping that this would quiet his death cries. I was thinking that maybe he just wasn't getting enough out of his mother as he should be (although, I found that hard to believe as she was full and she was being a good mother).

     Well, my "sheep-raising-daughter" went in look at him and see if maybe he was constipated. We thought a little mineral oil wouldn't hurt him and that it might actually help him. She came out of the bathroom and told me something I was not expecting to hear - the crying ramling had no anal opening! I said, "No way! Let me see". Sure enough, he was missing the hole. There was not even a spot for it. Soooo, he was suffering from a "constipation" of sorts. There was no way anything was ever going to pass out of him. We made the decision to put him out of his misery. 

     The following are 2 pics. The first is of his healthy brother's anal opening and the 2nd of his lack of an anal opening:

     I did do a little bit of online research about this condition. Most of the time it is just a fluke event that happens. If it happens to a female animal, sometimes they are able to live because there is a second opening there already. With a male it is a different story . . . surgery sometimes helps but, it is expensive and not always successful.

Baby Goats : February 2011

      Life has been busy and we have had a few newborn baby goat losses. The first 2 kids were out of a doe we have named Starlight. Several months back she had a worm load issue that we found out about by doing some fecal checks on her (Thanks to Abigail and Melody!). We found out her problem and treated her. She responded to the treatment and we bred her to a buck of ours. Well, she again began to have problems with her gut so we treated her for cocci, with a treatment that was suppose to be safe during pregnancy. But, it obviously affected her in a way that was not good. When we went out about a week ago to check on all the goats before going to bed, we found the 2 kids on the ground. They were about 2 months premature.

 The next kid death was on 2-17-11. I was at an appointment in town when I received a phone call from my daughter that does the goats with me. She was watching a doe we have (Doris) - Doris was in labor and pushing quite hard. My daughter went up inside to fell what was up and found the backbone of a kid coming down the canal. This normally spells trouble if it is not dealt with very quickly. In this case, I don't think there was anything that could have been done differently to save the kid. My daughter proceeded to straighten out the kid (that was already lifeless) and pull her out. Pretty quickly, there was a second kid that came in the breech position and was alive. This kid was followed by 2 more! So, 3 alive and 1 DOA.

      This morning we went out to feed the does after milking time and there were the 2 buckling kids dead in the barn. We had no clue at first whose they were but, after a quick look at some tails we discovered that it was Snickers. She is a bottle doeling that we kept from last year. Earlier this year (well, about 5 months ago!) we had a few different buck break-ins (OOPS!). Little Snickers obviously got bred during one of those times (without us knowing). These 2 kids were dead when we found them. They were all cleaned off but, the mother was not even by them. It seems that she birthed them in the middle of the night and never nursed them. It is quite possible that another doe licked them off as we have lots of motherly does in the barn.

Bow : 1-24-2010

Not much has to be said about Bow, as I will just repost the messages that were sent shortly after she died.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 2010

Our Beloved Bow

Animals add a dimension to our lives that is special. We learn from them, we train them, we raise them, we feed them, we play with them, we milk some of them, we walk some of them, we hug some of them and, we will miss some of them. That is the case with Bow. She was with us from 8 weeks old until this past Sunday (she was just a little over 6 years old).

In my 19 year old daughter's words in an email to her Granny and others she said the following:

Bow - 12/22/03 - 1/24/10

Bow passed away on Sunday. She had been noticeably sick for a couple weeks and we had been taking her to the vet, giving her antibiotics for what we thought could be the problem, etc. She was going down hill on Saturday night and Sunday. We decided to take her to the Emergency vet on Sunday to take some X-ray's of her chest and abdomen- she had been having trouble breathing. As we were loading her up, she went. As far as what she died of, we are not sure. 

Upon doing a necropsy, we found her lungs and heart did not look normal at all. We are thinking maybe some type of cancer or something. She was 6 this past December. Words cannot express the sadness........my third loss in a year and a half.

Ezriyah

Here are a few pics to show the sweet personality Bow had:

Good Bye Bow . . . You will be missed by Ezriyah the most.

Double Bubble : February 2010

Double Bubble was a doeling that was born at our place out in CA before we moved to Oklahoma. She was named Double Bubble because her and her brother both were coming out in their sacs at the same time. 

Here is the post that my daughter did about Double Bubble's last days:

"MONDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2010

Lots going on...

Well, it was a sad weekend. Thursday afternoon Double Bubble, a 2 year old first freshener doe who was 106 days bred (due in March) aborted a baby. I don't know why. She was doing pretty good but seemed like she missed the baby, until Saturday afternoon when she went downhill. Her temp was very low, so we brought her in the house and treated her for a lot of things (Listeriosis & Goat Polio, Hypocalcimia). Her temp went up and she seemed to be a bit better. But she had not pooped all day and was straining. We tubed her electrolytes a couple of times, and late Saturday night we gave her a couple enemas. She did end up pooping. I was really tired after that and went to bed. Mom checked on her throughout the night. In the morning, she was looking terrible. She started having seizures and could not stand anymore. Her eyes were darting back and forth. Classic signs of a far-along case of Listeriosis, even though we were treating her for it. As the morning went on, the seizures got longer and worse and worse. She was just slowly going, and I could not just sit there and watch her suffer. So we decided to put her down... hard decision. Very sad. She was born at our place in California and was a bottle baby. . .

But, we are still extremely blessed with too much to name."


LESSONS LEARNED - Sometimes there are not many that can be learned. This was the case with Double Bubble. The -6 degree weather was just too much and she aborted and then went downhill before our eyes. We were treating her aggressively with all that we knew to do. Sometimes God just takes them out quickly. Maybe we shouldn't breed for kiddings in the cold, cold weather!

Black Ramling : 2-4-2011

     Well, what a way to start my 46th birthday. This cute little ramling was stuck and I pulled him out of his mom just 2 days ago. He was a very big, alert and jumpy little ramling. Things would change this morning.

As I started my morning routine this morning, I went out to the stall that is attached to our house to find this little black ramling not looking so good. I quickly picked up his cold and limp little body and ran into the house. 

      I wrapped him up, called my nephew's house (that is right across the street) and told his wife I was coming down with a cold lamb. 

     She sat by the fireplace with him, rubbing him, syringe feeding him and trying to get him to respond for an hour or more. He warmed up and appeared to be more alert but then, he quickly started losing the desire to live. He had gotten to cold for too long. I brought him back to my house and put him into my daughter's arms by our fireplace. He died just moments later. Tears were shed even though this little ramling had no name yet.

LESSONS LEARNED

     Lesson one learned is that when I, the mama of this house am down and out with a raging fever, I have to make sure the kidos are doing all of the things that I do. These can be simple things, like just going out and looking at the animals for a few minutes.

     Lesson two is that I am learning that sheep are very different than goats. We have raised goats for years but, this is the first year we have experienced lambs being born. It has been harder because we have a flock of sheep that came to us bred and we do not know their due dates. Plus, the Lord is having all of these lambs come during the Groundhog Blizzard of 2011.

     Lesson three was a hard one for my 13 year old shepherdess to learn. She said she noticed that the ramling did not appear as active yesterday but, she is spoiled and used to me telling her what to look for and do. She was crying pretty hard as she sat in the rocker holding his dead little body. Some lessons come the hard way . . . this was one of them.

     

    As a result, I did a tiny bit of research about hypothermia in lambs. When I get that post put together I will link to it from here, Lord willing.

Why a Blog About Death?

     A blog about death? Why? Because it is through the hard lessons of raising animals that we have learned many things. This is being written to encourage those out there that raise animals. Anyone who raises animals for any length of time realizes that death comes eventually. Sometimes an animal death happens due to lack of experience on the breeder's part, sometimes it is due to an accident, sometimes it is planned, sometimes it comes unexpectedly, sometimes it is expected and sometimes it is due to old age.
     For whatever reason death hits, it is my hope that these stories of some of our animals that we have lost will serve to encourage those who read them. May lessons be learned from our losses to help prevent the death of an animal if possible.
     We also believe wholeheartedly that the Lord is the one that gives life and He is the one that takes life. For more info about that please go here - The Lord Kills