My little Nugget died last week after a heartbreaking 50 hours. On Tuesday morning she was her normal self, we did our farm chores. She followed me around while I fed the animals, raised hell with the chickens as I collected eggs. The norm. We went in the house and she had a little nap in the kennel while I made her bottle, when she got up to eat she was lame in her back leg and shaking. I held her under the heated blanket while she ate and shivered. I made the choice then to take her to the vet, despite the fact that they were closing and it would be an after hours emergency visit. We went, and the vet figured she had a fracture she sent us home after some antibiotics and painkillers. I knew it wasn't a fracture, and I should have been more assertive in my opinion. I explained how that seemed impossible to me, I would know as she's never further than about ten feet from me. Ultimately I figured the vet knew best and I must have been wrong. Nugget and I got home and slept snuggled up together, by the morning she was lame in both legs and not even getting up to pee. We went back in. The vet said it was white muscle disease caused by a selenium deficiency we gave her a shot of selenium and took her blood for further tests. We hoped she would improve. That evening the vet called me to go back once again, Nugget had no white blood cells in her sample which indicated that somewhere internally she had a massive infection. I drove to the vet as fast as my little car would go to get the antibiotics. We started her treatment but by the next morning she had no movement in any of her legs and her little neck had gone rigid. I laid beside her giving her cuddles and pets all night but by the wee hours of the morning I knew she wouldn't make it. I cried my little heart out. For the next hours I lay beside her trying to keep her as comfortable as I could while I waited for her to die. It broke my heart. I had become so confident that she would live a long healthy life as our little pet sheep, I knew she'd likely never be big enough to go back out with the others but we loved her the same as our dogs. A part of the family.
Speaking of our dogs, while all of this was happening with Nugget, our baby Bella had disappeared. The dogs took off in the morning on Tuesday and were gone for about an hour when I started calling for them. Rocky came home but Bella did not. I started driving around calling for her, then Nugget and I walked down our road calling for her, nothing.
We went back home. Dylan didn't go to work on Wednesday so that he could look for Bella. I made posters and began putting them up. I called the spca for the second time to finally learn that Bella was indeed there. She had been brought in by a neighbor. We have a very aggressive pyrenees in the area who has been chasing cows and bison and led to a number of calf deaths. Our little baby Bella had been mistaken for that dog while she was out visiting. So the neighbor caught her, easily of course. Bella is just a pup and a very friendly one at that so upon the neighbors approach she rolled over looking for some tum rubs. Our neighbor then took her into the spca. So our baby Bella was labelled as a bovine terrorizer and spent the night in puppy prison. I was hoping that had cured her wanderlust but this morning I put them out and she immediately took off down the road, so it seems her night in jail did her no good.
It was a stressful three days between looking for Bella and looking after little Nugget.
Here's the thing I'm learning but would rather have not. Antibiotic free organic livestock raising is what I had thought was the ethical thing to do. What I learned from Nugget is that especially in lambs, disease and infection are easy to prevent but near impossible to cure. Had I given all the lambs a shot of antibiotic when they were born and then again at a few weeks old, Nugget likely would have been okay. Previously I thought I was making the ethical choice, not putting unnecessary injections into my little baby cows, yaks or lambs. Now I'm trying to reconcile the morality of letting some die from easily preventable things rather than treat healthy ones unnecessarily. It seems to me that letting some die is not the ethical thing to do.
This is a side of raising livestock that I had never really thought about.
In other farm news, Bella is now living the grounded life, inside or tied up. This is not her favourite thing, but the chickens sure are happy. She killed another chicken last week, my one consistent layer. My chickens are the worst. Sometimes I have too many eggs and they lay like crazy, other times, they give me maybe a few eggs a day if any at all. Though probably Bella is causing them some stress. We've adjusted the coop and run though, so they appear to be much safer!
Jo-jo, Bridget and Brisket (the cows) have really warmed up to me. Brisket comes right over for cuddles and scratches, he loves a good ear scratch. Jo-jo is an actual maniac. She is crazy for oats. If I go in the pen without oats she licks me. From my feet to my head. It's so gross. The first time it happened I thought I was going crazy. "No way she just licked me!!" I thought. The girl will barely tolerate pets, I figured getting close enough to lick me of her own free will would be out of the question. It was not. She will lick and lick until I either leave or give her oats. She is okay with either but prefers the latter. Have y'all ever been licked by a cow?! It's a most jarring experience. The thing about it is that she's about ten times my weight, which makes it nearly impossible to push her away. By "nearly" I mean entirely. So that has become her thing now, no longer am I afraid of being skewered, just of being licked. Particularly frightening if I'm wearing shorts. Bare leg licks are incredibly gross.
She is beautiful, and I love her but the licking is a bit much.
My other two lambs, Molly and Polly are doing really well. They're growing quickly and are super active. Neither of them particularly like my company however. I've been trying to win them over with oats. I am never above bribery.
My little yak calf, Jack is also getting big! He's growing well and quite curious about me, much to his mamas dismay. I haven't yet braved the wrath of mom and tried to pet him, but my day will come. I will win his love.
Did you know that sheep and cows love to eat leaves? They climb up on the tree trunks and eat the leaves. They'll even bend or break branches off trees or break the entire tree down if its small enough. They're all psychos.
Look at this maniac. Absolute craziness. Never a dull moment. Yeah
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