Live and Learn

If we could start again in this sheep adventure, we would have done things differently. Mainly, we should never have bought Oprah and Ewean from the farmer that we did. It's too late to change that, though, and there's no time for regret when we're too busy treating feet. Yup, that's right. Even after culling Ewean, we are still dealing with f-ing foot rot.

We found Oprah limping a few days ago. The first check looked like foot scald so we sprayed her foot and let her go. When we rechecked the next day and the hoof wall had separated at the heel. We decided that we had to go into full out attack mode this time. Ewean had bad feet from the beginning - we think she would have remained a susceptible carrier forever. Oprah has never had foot issues before. The wet weather probably brought it on but we really don't want to be dealing with this all winter. We bought some zinc sulphate powder and after consulting with a vet, trimmed her foot right back and bathed her feet for a half hour. Then we let her go into the 'clean' yard by the house (foot rot bacteria dies after 2 weeks if there are no sheep/goat feet to infect). We walked back to check on Thomas, Amelia and Zeb....and noticed Amelia limping. Her foot didn't look as bad as Oprah's but we still bathed her feet and then let her go into the 'clean' orchard while we figured out what to do with her. We walked over to the fence to look at our pasture options....and noticed Thomas limping. There comes a point where you don't feel any emotion about the situation and you just get on with what you have to do....so we made a plan for dealing with Thomas. We somehow managed to flip him onto his side by surprising him while he was eating grain. We both lay on top of him and I bagged all of his feet (literally with bags - we've been pouring the zinc sulphate into small plastic bags and rubber banding the bag over each foot). We bathed his feet for almost an hour. Our only option for a Thomas-friendly paddock was one that's been empty for a week. We put him, Amelia and Zeb in there and left Oprah in the yard by the house. The plan is to make a foot bath that they'll walk through whenever they get a drink of water or some hay (using a foam mat so they can't drink the solution). Then, in 2 weeks when we have a fully clean pasture for them to go into, we'll do another hour long foat soak and an injection of antibiotics (we gave them each an injection yesterday along with the foot bath) and then we'll let them into the clean pasture. After that, we'll re-evaluate. It will probably be pretty rainy so we might have to treat again and move them into the dry barn.