Veterinary
We ran into lamb number 120 today and she was walking like she'd never had a broken leg. Dominique cut the splint off her leg the Saturday before last. Success stories are good stories and there are never enough of them.
How 120 broke her leg, we don't know. At birth her mother wouldn't accept her; maybe it happened when 120 was butted away in the jug. The ewe was a first time mother and was so crazed that to help calm her I gave her 1 cc of Oxytocin which among other things* assists maternal behaviors and is sometimes called a "love potion" because it facilitates relationships. After the injection the ewe slowly became caring and finally let her lamb to the teat.
Baby was saved.
But in the yard several days after her birth, I noticed 120 limping along on 3 legs and picked her up to find a broken leg.
It had to be set.
I wrapped the leg in one of our knit wool hats that we found laying around the shepherd's room, cut two splints from oak and wrapped everything tightly with duct tape. I gave the lamb 1/2 cc of Banamine, an analgesic, and put her on 1/4 cc of penicillin a day for a week.
120 is doing well, getting fat on mama's milk and peg-legging around like she's looking for a white whale; when she can put weight on the leg, in 2-3 weeks, we will cut the splint off.
*Oxytocin is a hormone active in female reproduction. Recent studies have begun to investigate it's role in various behaviors, including orgasm, social recognition, pair bonding, anxiety, trust, love, and maternal behaviors...from Wikipedia. Generally, I have Oxytocin on hand at lambing to assist milk let down in recently lambed ewes that are dry.
When I was a boy I was fascinated by microscopy and by the man who invented the microscope; I wished I had been named after him, but being called Theunis van Leeuwenhoek Wyatt on the playground might have made my early years difficult; moreover I don't think my father, after whom I was named, was that taken by the minutiae of this world, he enjoyed a broader view.
Theunis van Leeuwenhoek, born in Delft on October 24, 1632
...my work was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more than in most other men...
"Leeuwenhoek's interest in microscopes and a familiarity with glass processing led to one of the most significant, and simultaneously well-hidden, technical insights in the history of science. By placing the middle of a small rod of soda lime glass in a hot flame, Leeuwenhoek could pull the hot section apart like taffy to create two long whiskers of glass. By then reinserting the end of one whisker into the flame, he could create a very small, high-quality glass sphere. These spheres became the lenses of his microscopes, with the smallest spheres providing the highest magnifications." From Wikipedia.
Theunis van Leeuwenhoek's First Microscope
In my quest to know what worms reside in the bowels, by identifying and counting worm eggs in feces, of my sweet young lambs, I bought a microscope for $99.00 to investigate this dark matter and to confirm my FAMACHA eye-balling.
Eugene Stanley Wyatt II's First Microscope
Here is a likeness of one of the eggs that I found myself looking at; it was laid in lamb gut by a Haemonchus Contortis worm commonly called a Barber Pole. I will not re-post an image of the adult Barber Pole. This eyeless creature is just too horrible to look at; upon seeing the original photo several readers converted to Christianity.
A Haemonchus Contortis worm egg at 40 X in a slurry of sugar and lamb feces
Yet I do have my pleasantly unpleasant responsibilities. Know that ruminants, be they sheep, cows or goats, have terrible table manners—they eat where they shit. And this farmer, a provider of sustenance to keep you healthy by keeping his sheep healthy, is charged with the task of breaking the insidious cycle of the intestinal worm that plagues the pasture raised animal.
"Is that a Strongylid egg," perhaps from a Barber Pole, the deadliest stomach parasite; "to know, know, know him, is to love, love, love him..." I hum, hovering over my microscope peering into the secret world of sheep dung made possible by the inventiveness of master Leeuwenhoek.
I know you're hungry and I shouldn't go on, I shouldn't tell you about the microrrhizal fungal zone in the soil that surrounds your carrots—hearing this underground tale has sent vegans weeping in repentance to McDonalds. And I promise you that I will never publish the list, compiled by the USDA, of the acceptable levels of insect parts (house flies and the like) permitted in processed food sold at Whole Foods and other supermarkets—after reading the list you might be suddenly afflicted by anexoria nervosa while rolling your cart through the aisles.
Oriface to Oriface: Life Cycle of a Stomach Worm
Roger, a local guy who helped me with the sheep and whose family owned a chicken farm with a 100,000 birds up in Sullivan County, told me of a Hasidic rabbi who came to buy eggs. With his sleeve, Roger cleaned a smear of chickenshit from a shell; seeing him the rabbi said, "Don't worry, it never hurt to eat a little shit."