Baymule’s Farm

[baymule]

I called @Ridgetop on BYH, who is well acquainted with prolapses. We discussed the prolapse ewe. She convinced me that could sew up the ewes vulva to keep the prolapse in.

Ridgetop; Oh! It’s so EASY! Just get a curved needle and dental floss. Spray her lady parts with lidocaine sunburn spray and she won’t feel a thing!

Yeah, right.

So I texted the couple, told them I would care for the ewe, bring her to me. I assured them that she would have the finest of accommodations, her very own Pallet Palace!

I made no promises, but told them I would try my best for live lambs. They were relieved, they really want the best for her, they want the lambs, but both work long hours and just can’t be there for her.

He took the vet wrap off her yesterday morning, I probably had it on too tight. She immediately peed and pooped and yes, popped her prolapse right back out.

We unloaded her, put her in her private suite and gave her water. He admired my Pallet Palaces. LOL he said he throws away pallets and I can have them. They are handy for so many things!

A neighbor who is a nurse, does the prolapses on their cattle, and she came over to guide me through it. She washed off and pushed back in the red wad of uterus, a little bigger than a softball. Chase came over too, he held the ewe. Nurse neighbor had a vial of lidocaine and gave shots of it in the ewe’s vulva. Then we sprayed her back end with the sunburn stuff. And I stitched that poor ewe up.

I gave her a shot of B Complex and half a dozen squirts of Nutridrench. I gave her a wad of alfalfa, some Bahia hay, her own feed that my friend brought for her and called it good. She has been eating, she has drank, so far, so good.

So I learned something new yesterday, how to deal with a prolapse. For those who don’t know what a prolapse is, it’s actually part of the uterus the animal is pushing out. For whatever reasons, they try to give birth way too soon. If not caught and dealt with, the animal will die, along with her unborn young.

The goal is to keep the ewe from pushing her insides out, and hopefully wind up with live lambs. Best case scenario, she lambs, keeps her insides where they belong, and is able to raise her lambs. Her udder hangs low, a pendulous, swinging udder that I would cull her for. Bad udder, prolapse, both are terminal for culling.
Worst case scenario, she keels over dead and we lose the lambs too. Hopefully I can keep her alive, and she has live lambs.

They are ordering a prolapse harness and spoon today to be delivered to me at my house. When I get it, neighbor Chase will come over to help hold the ewe. I’ll cut her stitches out and figure out how to put a prolapse harness on her and the spoon. I’m not real clear on this, never done this before either. The spoon attaches to the harness, the spoon goes inside her “lady parts” and prevents her from pushing her uterus out again, but supposedly she can still give birth to her lambs. It’s best to take it off, but with no due date, who knows when that will be.

My son thinks the whole thing is hilarious and said, “Yeah! Take your prolapse ewe to the crazy old sheep lady!” I pointed out that I’m learning something new and I’ll have the experience in case I have to deal with one of my own. Hahaha.

Y’all wish me luck!

 

[pjn]

All learning thru this adventure with you.
May all go well.

 

[flowerbug]

i'm here eating fishsticks and tartar sauce for breakfast and you're talkin' lady parts fixing... what a world, what a world... good luck with this. poor critter.

 

[baymule]

All learning thru this adventure with you.
May all go well.

Thank you and I hope so too!

i'm here eating fishsticks and tartar sauce for breakfast and you're talkin' lady parts fixing... what a world, what a world... good luck with this. poor critter.

Hahaha! You just never know what I’ll be doing or what the description will be. On BYH we are a bit more graphic and we post pictures. We all learn from each other. I didn’t take pictures of the procedure, but if I had , they would have been posted on BYH, not here. I do have some sense of decorum.

 

[AMKuska]

@baymule - I know this is an odd question, but you mentioned stressed sheep don't taste as good. Why is that? What is the difference between stressed and non-stressed animals as far as flavor?

 

[ninnymary]

Bay, you would be proud of this city girl here. I knew what a prolapse is! haha

When will you know if she will make it? Will her lambs be proned to having prolapse like their mother?

You said you would cull her for having a low udder. What are the chances that her lambs will have it?

Mary

 

[baymule]

@AMKuska

The scientific basis for the phenomenon is well-established, and it’s frequently been discussed as a reason to make slaughterhouse practices more humane. The key ingredient here is lactic acid: in an unstressed animal, after death, muscle glycogen is converted into lactic acid, which helps keep meat tender, pink, and flavorful. Adrenaline released by stress before slaughter uses up glycogen, which means there’s not enough lactic acid produced postmortem. This affects different kind of meat in different ways, but in general it’ll be tough, tasteless, and high in pH, and will go bad quicker than unstressed meat. (Lactic acid helps slow the growth of spoilage bacteria.)

In pigs, stress and fear of all kinds right before slaughter—due to factors like rough handling, adverse conditions, fighting, or botched stunning—breaks down glycogen, making the meat pale, acidic, and crumbly. The technical name for this is “pale soft exudative” (PSE) meat, and it looks and tastes as unappetizing as it sounds. PSE meat is usually unsellable, and the pork industry loses $275 million a year on meat that has to be discarded because of pre-slaughter fear and stress. That’s a huge chunk of change but it’s not quite enough to spur large industrial farms to give their pigs a calmer, safer death. Because so much pork is sold as ground meat, according to the Atlantic, some of the lower-quality PSE meat can be snuck in without consumers noticing, so its effect on profits isn’t nearly as high as the costs of improving conditions across the board.

For cattle and sheep, and occasionally pigs and turkeys, the bigger concern is “dark, firm, and dry” (DFD) meat. This is also caused by pre-slaughter fear and stress depleting muscle glycogen. DFD meat is tough, dry, acidic, and dark in color; like PSE meat, it has a shorter shelf life, too.

How Cattle Stress Affects Beef Tenderness and Flavor

Learn how cattle stress affects beef tenderness and flavor, and how to avoid it in your beef production program.

www.grass-fed-solutions.com

Even when the stressor itself is gone; the adrenaline doesn't simply vanish. It has to be gradually broken down and expelled. All that adrenaline can change the chemical composition of the muscle itself – it becomes more acidic, stringy, and loses good protein. None of that translates into “delicious”

 

[baymule]

Bay, you would be proud of this city girl here. I knew what a prolapse is! haha

When will you know if she will make it? Will her lambs be proned to having prolapse like their mother?

You said you would cull her for having a low udder. What are the chances that her lambs will have it?

Mary

Oh I AM proud of you!

I don’t know if she will make it to lambing or I find her dead tomorrow. There’s just no way to know.

Some say the daughters of an animal that prolapses will have a tendency to prolapse too, and will take them to auction too. This ewe had twin ewes last year, I don’t see the need to load them up and get rid of them. Give them a chance to prove themselves.

Udders are part of conformation, just like any other body part. NONE of my sheep have low hanging udders like this. Their udders will get big with milk, but are well attached and do not hang down.

I guess I’ll have to get some udder pictures so y’all can see what I mean. @flowerbug when you read my farm journal, ya’ might not want to be eating at her particular time!

 

[baymule]

Whew! I finally came in at 9:43 PM.
I’ve checked on Prolapse Ewe all day. I collected fecal samples a couple of days ago, so after morning chores, I got busy on them. I finished at nearly 2, running out to check on ewe every so often.

At 3:35 I checked on ewe. Uh oh. She had managed to squeeze out a bag of amniotic fluid. How did she get THIS through those stitches??

I posted picture, but it in the small one at end of post. If you want to see it, click to enlarge. @flowerbug might be eating fish sticks. Being a farmer means doing whatever must be done to care for and some times save a life.

I texted Chase for help, he tied her up and held her still while I cut stitches loose. Then I watched. Nothing. She’s either going to miscarry, have lambs, or turn her insides out and die. I took pictures and sent to my friend. I was not optimistic. I told him that I wished that I could tell him how it was going to wind up, but I wouldn’t know until it got here. Be prepared for the worst and anything above that, take as a nice surprise. He texted back that he understood.

On one of my trips out to check on the ewe, there was a RATTLESNAKE right next to the back porch and I nearly stepped on it! First thing I did was put Carson up so he wouldn’t help me. Sentry and Buford were barking at their gate, they knew it was there. I grabbed a shovel.

Snake was biting shovel blade, I got him about 8” behind his head. I wanted to step on the shovel, to cut it in half, but didn’t want it to bite through my boot. Aha! A wood stake! Keeping pressure on the shovel, I sidled over to reach for the stake, then started whacking the snakes head. I beat that head over and over. Then stepped on shovel, cutting snake behind head, OFF. Then I raised shovel and beat a Smack Down on that snake head.

Snake was 5’ long, 11 rattles and a button.

Snake in a bucket anyone?

fed dogs, sheep, did chores. Check ewe. Cook supper, check ewe. Sitting in recliner, could see her through window. She was laying down, she raised her head and pointed her nose to the sky. That is a sign of being in labor! All of a sudden, she stood up and turned around! Something on the ground! I was outa there and at her pen as fast as I could get there.

A lamb! And breathing! Not dead! Then another lamb! Covered in yellow, that’s a sign of difficult labor. Ya’ think? I ran for towels, scrubbed them to further stimulate breathing, wiped faces and nostrils. Both were baa baaing! I grabbed Yellow goop lamb by hind legs and swung it around, turning in a circle, to clear fluids out of its lungs.

They struggled to their feet, trying to find milk. I squeezed a teat, milk! I helped one latch on and it started sucking. I squeezed the other teat and got nothing. No milk. I worried that they wouldn’t get enough colostrum, so I called Atwoods. Yes they had lamb colostrum . It was 7:30.

I hopped on the Kawasaki mule, raced it to my car at church and drove car to Atwoods. I found the colostrum and got a bag. It was getting dark. Once I got on the mule to drive the 2 miles home on the terrible road, it was going to be dark, and no lights on the mule. So I bought a good flashlight too.

I got home , mixed colostrum and went out to see if the lambs were hungry. They had full tummies, but took a little bit. The ewe moved and……. WHAT?? Another one?? TRIPLETS?? Yes! I offered it the bottle and it sucked down almost 2 ounces.

Mom is taking good care of her babies.

 

[AMKuska]

I know they are young, but they look pretty healthy to my untrained eye.