Just a little off the bottom

Sunday was a big day here on the farm....a sort of sheep spa day.

I had noticed a while ago that one of our new momma sheep, Rose, was limping. After catching her and getting a good look, I found that she had a mild case of hoof rot. Ick! Hoof rot is basically an infection of the hooves. It's pretty easy to tell when an animal has hoof rot. It smells terrible.

I also noticed that Pepper's feet were starting to turn out on one side so it was decided that we would have our first ever sheep hoof trimming day. So exciting!

We gathered all our tools, hoof trimmers large and small, some soak for rotty feet, a lanolin protective cream, penicillin injections, and I even stole some of the dog's grooming tools to try and remove some of the scraggy, nasty wool chunks hanging off the girls. Can't have unkempt looking sheep now can we?

The next step was getting the girls into the newly secured goat yard and catching them one by one to trimmed. Easier said than done. It took 3 people, a sheltie, and my handy stock stick to catch each sheep one by one.

 Our first victim was Maggie. We wanted to get her done so that she and the newest lamb ewe, Emma, could be put out first and not get run over or smashed. Maggie was actually happy to eat while I trimmed her hooves and our wonderful friend, A, removed loose wool.

Just like a day at the spa. 

 Big Onion was busy taking pictures of ears. This was to help us figure out their previous owner's ear notching system and get her birth records on each sheep.

At first we were putting the girls up on the goat's milk stand, but after Whoopi decided she would rather rest her...ahem....girl parts on my back (don't think that stain will ever come out!) than stand on three legs, we switched to laying the sheep down to work on them. Sheep are kind of amazing in that the minute you overpower them and get them off their feet, they just go limp. Go check out videos of sheep being sheered if you don't believe me. They just turn into giant wooly rag dolls...that fart and burp a lot.

 Even a couple of the babies got their first trimming. Fancy put up with it like a champ, but Optimus was a total handful, bucking and kicking the whole time he was held. Take note of Luna sacked out asleep in the background of this pic. That right there is a good stock dog, ready to work at a moment's notice, but completely fine with just being around the stock and chilling when not working.

Halp!

How can you help but love on something that cute? Even if your affections are neither appreciated or returned. 


In all, we had four girls with bad hooves. All got treated with penicillin and foot soaks. We will have to check them again in a week or two. We also tried to steal a little sheep milk from the mommas that were nursing babies. We learned that it is a lot easier to milk a goat than a sheep so the lambs are in no danger of us stealing their dinner.