Mama

Our old ewe Mama is not doing so well lately. I am treating her for a magnesium/calcium deficiency. Which is weird in the middle of summer. And she is not lactating and has a mineral block in her field but there you are, she has been hit by a deficiency. 

She has what I would call’ the staggers’. Difficulty standing up and when she does her legs go all knock kneed. This started on Thursday and of course she got worse over the weekend. It is possibly the result of pasture growing too fast in watery conditions shedding its minerals, or a fungus that grows on rye grass after a rain- making it toxic.  But honestly there are a number of ways to contract this I am more interested in beating it. No-one is in the rye grass field. And only Mama is affected.  Though she is bright, and eating and drinking yesterday she could not get up at all.

The vet said he had seen a bit of Tetany around lately with these very wet conditions.  He gave me a bottle of a treatment that is magnesium, potassium, calcium and dextrose. Usually delivered intravenously I am able to pour 100 mls of that down her throat once a day, I am also pouring Gatorade laced with cider vinegar down her throat twice a day as a tonic. I do all the pouring with a large capacity syringe kept specially for Mama. She literally sucks on it like a bottle. Like I said: we have done this before.

In fact, you and me, and she and I have gone through this routine before. She is no spring chicken and has had her fair share of set-backs but yesterday she bit my finger which I took as a good sign. Her eyes really are bright and she is very alert and calm.  Mama and I have a very strange connection, she has given birth to quads every year since I rescued her, often trying to clean me at the same time as she cleaned her lambs and she always pulls through.

This time the hardest thing is getting her to stay upright for any length of time. So once John got home we held her upright so she could pee.  I had the tractor in her field for her shade, so I took my hammock chair and slid it under her belly then attached the ends to the tractor bucket, creating a sling and while I hauled her upright, John very slowly lifted the bucket. Suspended in her hammock with her legs straight down, she peed, then began to graze – still in her sling. If her legs would work she would be a perfectly normal sheep. 

Her head is always up, not once has she laid down on her side. So I think if I can get her standing upright as much as possible and keep getting the minerals into her she might pull through.

I am working on it.  But she is an old sheep, I am not even sure how old. But I am not giving up until she does. 

I hope you have a lovely day.

Your friend on the farmy,

celi