Mystery Lameness---Solved!

Not too long ago, I learned a painful-but-funny lesson about the importance of observing ALL the clues and symptoms and not jumping to conclusions when a sheep is sick.

Soon after the 9 new ewes arrived from Monica's farm, one of them developed a severe sudden-onset lameness in one front leg. There was no obvious sign of injury, only a small amount of swelling just above the hoof. The sheep limped badly for a few days and then the symptoms gradually abated.

A few days later, another sheep had the same symptoms, then another and another. Over the space of a couple of weeks, 5 of the new sheep showed this sudden lameness.

What could it be? We've had trouble with black widow spiders here before, but I couldn't imagine an army of black widows out in the pasture only attacking our new sheep.

Selenium deficiency can lead to lameness, but the symptoms don't look like what I was seeing, and besides I know Monica has done a great job of keeping her flock's selenium levels up, so the new sheep wouldn't be on the brink of deficiency so quickly no matter what.

Why was this affecting the new sheep and not my existing flock? I tried to think of some change in food or environment, some toxic weed in the pasture, that could cause the symptoms I was seeing.

Soon after, one of my previous sheep (Phoebe) showed the symptoms too. I was getting really worried. It was an epidemic, and I couldn't figure out what was causing it!


Then, a few days later, I was out picking up fallen pears under the pear tree and throwing them over the fence so the sheep on the other side could eat them---something I do about every other day this time of year.

As I was doing this, I reached for a pear and got stung on the finger by a yellowjacket. Not surprisingly, sudden severe pain and swelling ensued.

It was then that I finally realized that the exact same thing had been happening to my sheep!

All the sheep I got from Monica loved to eat pears, while my other sheep were indifferent to them---all except for Phoebe, the ONE sheep of mine that also got lame, who would stand and eat pears all day long if you let her.

So, to my (somewhat painful) relief, it wasn't an epidemic after all, not a mysterious sickness... just a particular group of sheep who like pears enough that they are willing to risk getting stung to eat them!

Here you can see a slightly comical video clip of Phoebe eating a pear. Because sheep don't have any top teeth in the front of their mouth, they have a hard time just biting off pieces of pear to eat the way we do. Phoebe solves that by shoving the entire pear into her mouth so she can chomp on it with her molars.

You can tell by her expression that she is thoroughly enjoying the challenge!

Return of the Ladybugs

Imagine you're standing outside during the winter's first gentle snowstorm. Snowflakes, widely spaced but falling steadily, drift slowly down all around you. In passing, some cling to your hair and clothes.

Now, imagine the same image, except that the snowflakes are drifting sideways instead of down. And instead of being snowflakes, they are ladybugs. That's what happened in our yard today.

The ladybugs are back.

These aren't the ladybugs I grew up with back home in Maine, where to sight one of the shiny ruby colored bugs was considered lucky. These, I've been told, are some imported variety that has taken over in this environment. They are a dull rusty orange color, and they come in SWARMS.

They crawl into any crack or crevice they can find, to hibernate in the walls of older buildings for the winter. But they don't stay asleep. They find their way through the walls by the hundreds and swarm all over any sunny window in the house. You can vacuum them off the window, and five minutes later, just as many more have crawled out of the wall to replace them.

They fly erratic loops around the rooms and get stuck in your hair---and if you're very unlucky, your food. They crash into the bulb of the halogen floor lamp and burn. They crawl everywhere, including between the sheets of your bed. They crunch underfoot like popcorn. And they STINK!

As you can tell, I've come to really dislike these creatures. It seems that all old houses in this part of Virginia have them. We had them at the previous house we were renting too. But, unless I'm willing to spray my house full of pesticides, there doesn't seem to be any way to get rid of them.

I've endured the ladybug problem ever since we moved to Virginia eight years ago. But this is the first time I've actually seen them arrive. It was kind of creepy. I'd never really thought about it. I guess I'd always just sort of assumed that the bugs were around in the environment all summer long, and just came into the house for the winter.

But today, when we were outside in the yard, the ladybugs were clearly swarming here from elsewhere. You could see them from a distance, flying in that gentle erratic motion, like snowflakes, but the sky was full of them. Dozens of them kept getting caught in our hair, clinging to our clothes, trying to crawl in our ears and eyes and nose. YUCK!

Thousands of them were clinging to the walls of our barn, crawling up under the clapboards. Which is fine with me. Every one of them that decides to hibernate in the walls of the barn is one that isn't hibernating in the walls of the house.

So for all of you who order packages of ladybugs from gardening catalogs so they'll eat the aphids off your rose bushes: STOP! Don't pay good money for more ladybugs that are all going to leave your garden to fly to my house for the Great Ladybug Convention. Just come get the old already-trained ladybugs that you bought last year. They're all here... all you have to do is come pick them up!

Many Perils

Well. That was an interesting afternoon! A classic example of the many perils of living the farming life.

First, as I was feeding the fillies tonight, Torchsong---who now thinks she is queen of the paddock---had her head buried in the hay feeder I'd just filled and mistook me for one of the other fillies crowding behind her. She let fly with one hind hoof, and before I knew what hit me, I was sprawled in the mud behind her.

Sorry girl, but that "Whoops, I didn't know it was you," kick-first-and-ask-questions-later excuse is not good enough! I spanked her with the hay strings I was carrying and did the dominant-mare thing of driving her away from the herd and away from the feed until she had time to think about her crime.

In horse-herd dynamics, it is the less-dominant horse's responsibility to be aware of the lead horse at all times, and to show respect by yielding position when the lead horse approaches. Kicking the boss mare, even accidentally, is likely to earn the offender a serious trouncing.

As it was, I drove her away from the feed two more times, until she stood still submissively, out in the pasture. Then I went out, spoke to her kindly, and made a point of leading her back to the feed. When we were almost there, I made her stop and wait until I gave her permission to continue.

Lesson learned: I am the boss mare. I say who eats and when. When I want you to move, you move, and you don't just kick at random when I'm in the vicinity.

By nature, I'm not a very domineering person. But working with all these animals as I do, I've had to come to terms with the importance of establishing a clear leadership role at all times, for my safety as well as the animals.

For example, shortly after we bought our stallion, Senter, Ken was helping me do some chores, and he tied Senter to a post for me, but---not knowing any better---he used too long a rope. With nobody there attending him at the moment, Senter got one of his forelegs over the rope, jerked his head up, and ended up tripping himself. His feet slipped out from under him, and he ended up lying on his back with one foreleg wrapped in his rope and one hind hoof tangled in the fence beside him.

This was a recipe for a HUGE disaster. If he panicked, he could easily have done permanent, possibly fatal damage to himself.

From three paddocks away, I heard him go down. As I rushed through the intervening gates, trying to get to him as quickly as possible without panicking him more, I put on my Voice of Authority: "Whoa, Senter. WHOA!"

Miraculously, he heard me, and even though we hadn't had very long to bond yet, he obeyed the Voice. Still trapped upside down, he froze exactly in place and didn't move until I got there. He held still while I released the rope from his halter and unwrapped his leg. He continued to hold still while I (quite dangerously... but what choice did I have?) leaned over him and worked his hind hoof free from where it was caught in the mesh fence panel.

He didn't move until I pushed his feet down, rolled him onto his side, and told him, "Okay." When he got up, he was shaken, but uninjured except for a minor scratch on his leg.

Such is the power---and importance---of maintaining a clear chain of command among the animals. It keeps you safer, and it allows you to keep them safer.

Along those same lines... the second thing that happened this afternoon was that Ken and I put up an additional sheep pen in one corner of the back pasture. This is because we have only two permanent sheep paddocks, and we'll have three breeding groups this year, so we needed a third paddock.

When the paddock was finished, we released the two new rams from their little quarantine pen into the new paddock. They had been treated very kindly at the farm where they grew up, so they have friendly temperaments, which in a ram is both good and bad. It makes them easy to catch and handle, but when rutting season comes along, it can also encourage them to be aggressive towards you.

Ram attacks are no joking matter. At their worse, rams are 200+ lbs. of testosterone-driven muscle and horn. One good hit could very easily put you in the hospital or worse.

Almost universally, the advice experienced shepherds will give you is: Don't tame your rams. They must stay a little bit afraid of you. If they have no fear at all, they have no respect. Under the influence of heightened testosterone during breeding season, a lack of respect can lead to attacks.

My philosophy with my rams is not quite so absolute. I'm friendly with them. I speak kindly to them and will give them a quick scratch under the chin from time to time. But as with the horses, I insist that they show respect and be willing to promptly back off at any moment that I make myself "look big" and stomp in their direction.

If a ram does not back off promptly, I get big and loud and chase him until he thinks twice about hanging around. As soon as he scampers away, I let him go. With repetition, all my rams usually stay quite respectful. They know the rules.

But as soon as these two friendly new boys were released into their larger paddock, they started feeling all manly and butting each other, with a big crashing of horns. Very typical of this time of year, nearly breeding season.

They also crowded around my legs with absolutely no regard for my "back off" signals. Time for a little training session.

I made myself big and roared ferociously. The rams didn't care at all. I bonked one of them in the nose with the flexible rubber feed dish I was holding. Still no retreat. Yikes! Rams that unafraid could very easily become quite dangerous in the future!

ROOOOAAARRRR! Bonk, bonk, BONK, BONK! I chased the poor, bewildered rams around, bopping them with the rubber dish, until they scampered away. Then I released the pressure on them and walked away.

Did they learn? As one approached me again, I stomped in his direction, and he quickly backed off. Good boy! Quick learner.

I'll have to keep testing that we have an understanding now, but with repetition, I think they will remember their manners. That way I can avoid broken bones, and they can avoid becoming lamb chops!

Sheesh. It's been a hard transition learning that the dominance/respect issue is absolutely crucial in dealing with my animals. I would rather just be sweet and loving towards them all. But that's not how it works in real life, so I've really had to work on my leadership role, which is not one that has come natural to me.

I think I'm doing okay though. That's one thing about animals, they'll always give you honest feedback about how you're doing. And for the most part, my animals love and respect me, and are not afraid of me. So I guess I'm managing to keep the interactions between us balanced and fair, which is all the animals ever really ask of us.

Anyhow, the third peril of the afternoon came when I was moving the water trough into place in the new sheep paddock. As I lifted one edge of it, my fingers curled under the lip at the edge and encountered the unmistakable fuzzy texture of a spider's nest.

Since I've already encountered several black widow spiders in that same part of the property this summer, I immediately dropped the trough, then lifted it from a different place and peeked underneath.

Sure enough, I'd stuck my finger directly into a black widow nest, and there was the widow herself, right where my finger had been! Luckily for me, she was already dead.

I don't know much about spiders, but don't they die after they've laid their eggs? At least, that's what happened in Charlotte's Web, wasn't it? So, I lucked out and didn't get bitten today, but it looks like I'm going to have to be on the lookout for her many descendants in the future.

Just more of the many perils of farm life!

Now I think I'll go lie down on the couch and watch TV. I didn't think I was hurt when Torchsong kicked me into the mud, but now my back is stiffening up, so I guess I took more of a jarring than I realized.

A few stretches and a good night's sleep, and I'll be fine. Ready for tomorrow's perils, whatever they may be!

Yo-Ho-Ho and a... Bucket of Skulls?

When you dream about someday owning a farm, you picture yourself picking fresh tomatoes from your garden, collecting eggs from your own chickens, maybe helping a curly, wet lamb stand up for the first time.

You don't picture yourself trudging up the hill on a hot September morning, lugging a bunch of skulls in a bucket like some bizarre and gruesome lunch box!

Even more odd, my task was complicated by the fact that I had to go through something akin to a pirate's treasure hunt to find my grisly plunder: Follow the line of trees down the hill, go so many paces past the path, and enter the woods at this particular gap in the wall of cedars.

That's where we keep the cage full of heads.

Yes, that's right. We keep a cage full of ram's heads hidden in the woods near the edge of our pasture. Gross, huh? Let me explain.

Each year, a few of our rams get sent to slaughter. The meat goes in our freezer in neat white packages. The hides and heads come back to us in a bloody cardboard box. The hides I salt for future tanning. The heads get stashed someplace far away (and down wind!) from the house until the insects eat all the flesh off the skulls.

We picked a spot down in the woods, near the edge of the pasture, as being far enough away but still easily accessible. We didn't want foxes, skunks, and raccoons to drag the heads off and destroy them, so we bought one of those rectangular wire rabbit cages to keep them in. That keeps the larger scavengers at bay while still allowing free access to the insects.

Once the bugs have cleaned the skulls, the outer horn material will slide right off the inner bone core. I clean the horns and sell them on my sheep web site. They can be used for a lot of different craft projects, including handles and buttons. The skulls, once cleaned up, make interesting rustic decorations.

I'd gotten an email from someone interested in buying some horns, so today was the day to go gather up my harvest of heads and take photos to show the potential buyer.

It's one more small bit of income for the farm, and one more way of honoring the gifts of the sheep that go to slaughter, by making use of as much of their body as possible.

In that way, even the rams that did not grow up to be exceptional enough to use as breeding animals can still make their contribution towards supporting the rest of the flock.

If You Don't Bother Them...

The wasps are coming into the house again.

I know, I know. It's part of the price of living in an old house. They leak your expensive heat and air-conditioning dollars OUT while leaking bugs, rodents, and the occasional reptile IN.

I didn't mind opening the hall closet a few weeks ago and finding that a snake had crawled down inside the wall and fallen out into the closet where the wall isn't finished. It had probably been living inside the walls for weeks, eating mice and such.

It was just a harmless black rat snake, a breed that I'm told will keep other types of (poisonous) snakes off your property. So I'm all for the black snakes! If they're going to keep the copperheads away, I'm happy to host as many of them on my property as possible. However, I'd rather they didn't live in the house, so this one did need to be relocated outside.

I DO mind our annual winter infestation of ladybugs. They come by the thousands to hibernate in the crevices of the house walls, and invariably a lot of them will meander through the walls and find a way to get into the house.

All winter long, and particularly in the spring when they are starting to wake up and become active again, our windows will be swarming with ladybugs. We vacuum them up, but more just keep appearing. They fly around and crash into your head, they crawl into the bed when you're trying to sleep, they crunch under foot, and they STINK if you touch them.

But worst of all, there are the wasps.

All summer long, I've had a reprieve from them. Earlier this year, Ken had plugged up the hole where we thought they were getting in, and I thought I was done with them for good. Then last week, one appeared in my office. Then another. Now there have been three in the past 24 hours. Uh-oh.

They're BAAAAAAACK!

It's always my office where they appear first and most frequently. Occasionally, they'll also show up in my bedroom, which is the next room over.

Now, I tend to be your basic tree-hugging animal lover at heart, so whenever possible, I try to adopt a live-and-let-live policy toward the critters and creepy-crawlies I encounter. When the wasps first started showing up in my office shortly after I moved here, that's how I tried to treat them. With caution and respect.

Unfortunately, the feeling was not mutual.

Once the adventurous wasps had crawled through the labyrinth of the house walls and emerged into my office, they would crash around for a while, apparently looking for the Great Wasp Mecca they'd been told was just inside. When they didn't find it, they'd get really cranky and set out looking for someone to blame.

Since I'm the one who spends many hours of each day in this room, clearly I must be the one at fault. I'd be sitting quietly at my desk, typing an email, and they would make their way across the floor, crawl up my pant leg and sting me!

Not satisfied with this, at night they would pilgrimage all the way into the next room, climb into my bed, and sting me in my sleep!

Believe me when I say that after this happened a few times, I became a little jumpy and suffered from frequent bouts of insomnia!

The worst thing that happened was when I got stung two times just about a week apart. You know how when you get a vaccine, you sometimes need a second booster shot a week or two later, to make your immune system really kick in? Well, it works for wasp stings too.

The first sting was the normal "OWWW! I've just been stabbed with a fiery, poison-tipped needle" kind of sting. I yelled, slapped myself, and did a vigorous anti-wasp dance.

The next time, my immune system recognized the invading wasp-venom, and immediately went to war. For the next 24 hours, I was feverish, nauseated, and covered with an itchy red rash. Restless and uncomfortable, I couldn't eat, sleep, formulate a coherent thought, or hold a real conversation. I was very, very lucky in that I did not go into anaphylactic shock and have my airways shut down.

That was the end of my pacifist policy toward the wasps. No more ignoring them, no more opening the window to help them escape. Now it's prompt, pure, first-strike aggression. There's a heavy-duty flyswatter beside my desk, and I'm not afraid to use it!

When I was little, my mother always told me not to be afraid of bees and wasps. Like most parents, her adage was, "If you don't bother them, they won't bother you."

As an adult, I've learned that this is not entirely accurate.

The real truth is, "If you don't bother them, sometimes they'll come sting the crap out of you anyway, just for the fun of it."

Then you are perfectly justified in seeking revenge!

Peri's Progress and Other Photos

Remember how awful Peri's leg looked when I wrote about it before?

Here it is three weeks later. No maggots, no necropsied flesh, no giant hole that lets you see down in between the leg bones. Just a lot of pink new flesh.

The leg is still weak and floppy in that area (presumably from nerve and tendon damage) and Peri still lies down most of the time, or hops around on three legs.

But her attitude is cheerful, her appetite is good, and she has learned to lie still and let us do the daily cleaning and rebandaging of the wound, so it looks like she's going to make it through this adventure after all.

(See Peri's Reprieve if you missed reading her story the first time around).

While I'm on the subject of legs: Leeloo went back to the vet again today for another checkup and bandage change on her broken leg.

(See Life Plays Us Like a Game of Jenga and The Dogleg in the Dog Leg, if you missed what happened to her).

She's making such good progress that she doesn't have to go back again for a month now.

Unfortunately, having the vet change the bandage again alerted Leeloo to the fact that bandages can come OFF, so when she got home, she immediately chewed the new bandage off, and we had to put it back on ourselves.

But in the meantime, I took a picture of her "Bionic Puppy" leg, showing all the pins and braces holding it together.

It's been a bad summer for legs here. Besides Peri and Leeloo, our cat Henry and our mares Char and Scylla each were briefly lame in one front leg, for unknown reasons. Fortunately, they recovered without expensive vet care!

I narrowly avoided a potential medical emergency of my own tonight. When reaching down to turn off the outside faucet after watering the animals, my hand passed within six inches of this lovely and sinister looking Black Widow Spider.

Normally I don't kill spiders. I figure they're mostly going to eat bugs that are more annoying than they are, so I like to let them alone to do their job.

But, sorry, I just couldn't leave this one to live and reproduce right next to my back steps where Ken and I and all our cats hang out regularly. We do not need any more medical emergencies here, either of the animal or human variety.

On a brighter note, I had to take a picture of the hay in our hay feeder after we filled it up tonight.

I thought it looked pretty, the way we arranged the alfalfa and orchard grass bales in an alternating checkerboard so that each horse will be able to reach some of each kind of hay when they come in to eat.

Naturally, they'll all crowd in and rush to gobble up all the alfalfa first, so it's important to make sure each horse gets her fair share.


Here are the horses waiting for us to open the gate so they can come in and eat that alfalfa.

Here's what happened when the gate was opened.

That's Torchsong, our yearling Paint/Saddlebred cross filly at the end of the video. Quite the firecracker today, wasn't she?

Poor thing, she's at the bottom of the herd's pecking order, so she knows there's not much point in hurrying in to be fed, since the other horses make her wait until last anyhow.