Rhododendrons Suck

When we first got the sheep I came across a blog that talked about how careful you have to be when moving sheep past rhododendrons, since these plants are poisonous to grazing animals (and apparently, even the honey made from rhododendron pollen is toxic for people). After reading that, we fenced off the rhododendron plant that's in the yard by our house right away. When we put the goats in there, I added another layer of fence to block off the plant since goats are much better at getting over/under/through fences than sheep are. 

Yesterday morning we woke up to 2 very sick goats. They were both unusually quiet and standing still and shaking. May had vomited and neither was interested in food. I knew right away it was the rhododendron - sure enough, they'd pushed the fence down (I'm still kicking myself because I *knew* that fence wasn't strong enough to keep them away from the plant). 

We started reading what to do; the goats needed to be given activated charcoal to try and soak up the toxins. Since it was 7:30 on Sunday morning, we couldn't reach anyone except the small animal emergency clinic, and they wouldn't give us any charcoal since they aren't licensed to practice on large animals. 

While waiting for drug stores and health food stores to open (I guess people use activated charcoal for their own stomach issues) we made an oil/baking soda/tea/ginger mix and gave it to the goats. The oil apparently coats the stomach, the baking soda helps to relieve gas, the tannins in the tea help neutralize the toxins and the ginger helps relieve pain. Honestly, I have no idea how well this works but it was better than doing nothing while waiting for the stores to open. The sooner you can get some of the toxins out of their system, the better - so it was good that May was at least vomiting some of them out.

We ended up going to at least 10 stores before finding the activated charcoal tablets at a health food store. We mixed some of the tablets with water and gave that to the goats, followed an hour later by milk of magnesia. By the afternoon the goats were seeming better and were interested in eating some blackberry leaves. This morning they are both eating hay and a tiny bit of grain. They're a bit quieter and less active than usual but they are much better than yesterday. 

This is where that damn rhododendron plant went:

Needless to say, that was not a relaxing Sunday. Emma was supposed to come visit for the day but I had to cancel since we were dealing with the goats. I'm going to buy some electric netting fence today so that we can make temporary paddocks for goats and sheep when we want them to graze/browse certain areas. We let the goats out on Saturday and walked around with them but we need to train them some more before they have free range of the property - at this point we'll just lose them out there!

Up until Sunday, we had a beautiful sunny week and a few visitors. My mom came on Tuesday and we roasted the last of the roosters (one of the two that we'd slaughtered a few months ago). Then Ross visited for the rest of the week to plan a trip that we're going on next week. 

The chickens have him cornered.

Magpie has decided that she likes walking around on top of the coops. She can fly up 8" no problem!

The cows that may or may not be pregnant...if they are, the calves are due any day. It's like that show "I didn't know I was pregnant". The women are usually so large pre pregnancy that they don't get any bigger when pregnant. Never seen that show? Yeah....me neither....I never watch crappy TV....

Abby continues to love her foster sister, Lexi...

(this is also how I feel about those rhododendrons!)