Sheep Meds and Rising Sap

Sheep meds - against worms, fluke and Clostridium infection

A text message in the week from Sue and Rob reminds us that this is the time of year to catch up on our annual round of sheep medication. Both farms subscribe to the "nearly organic" school of management (Yes, I know the purists deny the existence of this one; you cannot be "nearly" organic, you either are, or you're not) - we do not do any un-necessary drugging, like the day to day dosing with antibiotics performed by the commercial boys, and we try to only use the vet when we have a known, proven disease.

The smallest bottle of Covexin you can buy - 50 ml.

3 conditions in sheep, though, have us convinced enough to be 'likely', so we allow these (worms, fluke and Clostridium infection) preventative meds in and hang the organic 'ticket'. The worms and fluke are just because it is wet, boggy land, and worse just outside our boundary, so that the little snails which act as secondary host to the fluke could easily get at us. Having said that, every time we slaughter a lamb we get the butchers to slice through the liver enough to confirm that it is 100% free from fluke damage and we have not had a bad one yet. In our defence we also own that the local farm co-ops all stock the fluker and wormer; a sure sign that plenty of farmers locally do this too.

The Clostridium thing is a little more complicated. We were not doing this up till winter 2015/16 and you may recall that in that autumn/winter we borrowed the lovely Suffolk ram 'Rambo' from Sue and Rob for 5 weeks to 'see to' all our ewes. A good job he did too, giving us 3 pairs of twins. All seemed well and we shipped him off back home with everybody happy and healthy. Or so we thought. I don't think I said this in the blog but, unfortunately, 2 weeks later, he suddenly upped and died for no apparent reason. They found him stretched out in the field at morning rounds.

The lovely bright red bark of dogwood.
Dogwood grows round here like weeds

Now, we don't know for sure that it was Clostridium that did for him (nobody spends money on post mortem on run-of-the-mill sheep like ours) but from our research and digging (including talking to our vet, of course) that is pretty much the only thing that causes fast, unexplained death with no prior symptoms and it can lie dormant in the animal and then be triggered by the stress of moving the sheep around. Obviously we also have no idea whether Rambo had it all along, or picked it up at home or at our place but the advice was to get everybody vaccinated.

A local donkey makes it into the '365' album

When you go to buy meds for sheep here you immediately hit a problem well known among smallholders and frequently moaned about. The manufacturers of the meds do not cater for us and the smallest quantity of drug you can buy is designed to meet the needs of normal size flocks.

Coming back into lay after the oddly late moult.

Our advised drug for the Clostridium (Covexin 10) comes down to 50 ml bottles and the dose is 1 ml, so you have to buy 50 doses. It is €37 or so so we have to try to share the 'pain' between a few smallholders. In our case, we bought the Covexin, Sue got the wormer and fluker. In fairness the drug lasts 3 years in the fridge and any new animals get introduced to the treatment via a double dose, 5-6 weeks apart, so between us we will get through about a third of it and only throw away about €25's worth. Ah well.

The 'new' kittens are 5 months old now.

So, over I went to do the first of the paired jabs  on 2 of Sue's new ewes and the new ram, Silas, replacement for the late Rambo (May the Lord have mercy etc). It was my first chance to clap eyes on him properly and weigh up his prospects of doing a good job for our ewes and I must admit to being a bit taken a-back by how tiny he seems compared to my mountainous Mummas. Apparently he is "all there" and has been making muddy foot prints on the flanks of Sue's ladies but he's only 6 months old and might not be 'man' enough. He is, though, our only option currently and we are going to raddle him up and give him the benefit of the doubt. In fairness we are not that pushed about getting a gazillion lambs off our 4 ewes so if he 'misses' or manages only singletons we will not be upset. We will look forward to using him again in 2017 when he is a big, strong 18 month old shearling. Good luck Silas.

Domesticity goes on for ever.

A little amusing aside on the meat-stock. Over the few years I have been here I have had a few happy chats with a neighbour about producing our own pork, lamb, chicken, etc. He is a life long beef farmer but amazed me by never having eaten any of his own meat - his animals go off to the big factories locally and into the supermarket food chain.

I was never intending to get that deep into Twitter. I seem to have
racked up 3000 'tweets' mainly chatting to the smallholder crew.

He tells me wryly that he is sure it is gorgeous (young, healthy, tender, almost organic (that one again!)) but that if the family wants beef on the table then herself has to trot off to the supermarket and buy anonymous meat in cling film packaging like "everyone" else. I joke with him that he is mad and surely just a little bit curious to sample his own product. Well he told me this week that he has decided to try it so a heifer has been chosen, taken off to local man Webb's (who does our pigs) and is currently hanging in the cold store there before being butchered up, and "herself" was sent off to town with a wad of money to buy a BIG freezer. Thought that'd amuse you.

This pic is a bit of a fake. The apples are
from our cider tree, variety Dabinette but
the cider is by the guy down the lane who
gave our pigs the pomace after squeezing
his normal dessert apples.

Meanwhile here today, everybody seems to be through their feather moult and feeling the sap rising. I have seen the Araucana cock dusting up with a Marans or two. Through the kitchen window I saw our #2 Buff Orp rooster set about the biggest male turkey poult and promptly get beaten up by all three poults acting together. One we think is a female, but maybe turkeys do this as a pack. Later I saw the big male turkey poult get hold of the smaller female by the scruff looking for all the world like he was about to mount. Child snatcher! On my afternoon rounds I inadvertently walked by that #2 rooster and felt the flap and strike of a kick-out. He'd had a little pop at me, the silly lad. He doesn't want to start that malarkey. We don't entertain human-aggressive roosters here. Then at lock up I had lost the turkeys. They were in the kitchen garden with the male in full display mode, tail erect and fanned, strutting his stuff like a pro. I had to shepherd them to bed. In his defence, as soon as he saw me his tail went down and he allowed himself to be shepherded.

Finally a fun pic taken by one of our archers, Yulia, who (with hubby 'Colly', of course) has recently brought lovely little Feliz Sophia into the world and now brings the baby along to our sessions to watch us 'arch' from her buggy-cot. I had offered to cuddle her (the baby, not Yulia!) during our coffee break to give Mum a chance to drink her tea, and she caught this cute pic of me doing bottle feeding duties. Ahhhhhhh.

A Pea-Sized Problem?

Sheep meds - against Clostridium

More vetinary adventures for us in this post, this time involving sheep and our 3 year old Westie bitch, Poppea.

First up, the sheep. You will recall our little sheep-team was saddened by the rather sudden death of the ram we borrowed recently, Rambo, a couple of weeks after he was shipped home. Our research since and consultations with our sheep-vet have convinced us that this was probably the result of Clostridium infection which tends to kill quickly and without much warning. Sheep carry these bacteria around, by all accounts, in their tonsils area and something else - some weakness or shock sets the raging infection off. Most shepherds locally (we now know) innocculate preventatively for this in the same way you might do a dog; two shots 6 weeks apart to start you off, then repeat jabs annually.

The victims looking a bit anxious.

The vet recommended a 10-type (ten species of Clostridium) concoction called Covexin 10 which was not stocked locally, so we needed a mercy-dash to the Swinford branch of our local farms co-op for it, It is also rather pricey at €69 per 50 ml but this would do 50 doses and will keep till 2017. All these drugs are 'designed' for farmers with a size-able flock, and they do not sell a 'small holder' sized bottle. [Aside: The vet was horrified by this price and said it should have been more like €35, so I checked my receipt and found they had run 100 ml through the till, though I got a 50 ml bottle. I need a run back to Swinford and sort this out. Things you discover when you go to write a blog post!].

You'd not want to find THESE on the bathroom floor.
Sheep toenail clippings. 

The vet came this morning. I was ready with the four victims penned in my new hurdle-pen and looking a bit anxious. I had already trimmed Polly's feet and sprayed them, and was well into dagging Myfanwy's tail, so well they might. I got the vet to show me how to do the injections (simple subcutaneous ones) so that I can do the follow up ones, or any for friends' sheep, myself - I have 50 ml of Covexin to get through and each sheep only needs 1 ml per shot. I then quizzed her on the fluke/wormer thing and she advised drenching a bit later on - maybe after Christmas when we round them up for their 2nd jabs. Apparently the drench can cause issues with tiny new lamb foetusses and you are better letting the pregnancy progress a while before you start lashing in the chemicals.

There! You don't get many pics of dogs' boobies on any
other blog, do you? Poppea's little swelling.  This 'Lady' has
at least swung her tail down and under to cover up her modesty

Then there was Poppea, making a lovely recovery from her spay a few weeks back, when we found her licking at her scar. On checking we found she had a neat pea-sized swelling part way down the scar line. I was concerned that this might be a small hernia with 'innards' coming through an unhealed split in the abdomen muscle wall, so tonight we were back off to the other vet, in town for some reassurance. No need to worry, apparently.

Poppea back home and resting after her adventure

By the time we got there, of course, Poppea had licked and nibbled the swelling till it had burst and then licked the area clean. It was just a minor swelling (oedema) at one of the stitches with fluid trapped beneath the skin. The muscle wall is intact  The tiny flap of skin will heal itself. She will keep it clean by licking it. There's a relief. We had worries about her having to go back under the knife to get the 'rupture' stitched up.

A good name, a beer deserving of a second chance?

Home for a well deserved beer then, and I had spotted another of the modern glut of "craft beers" with fancy names and modern, garrulous labels. This was "Sheep Stealer" from the Black Donkey Brewery who are in a town/village so near that it contains my nearest Protestant (Church of Ireland) place of worship, Ballinlough, County Roscommon, were I so inclined. To be honest, I was not that impressed by the beer first time out. It was a pale yellow, very hazy, a bit acid and massively gassy. These, I know are deliberate in some beers and can be the sign of a good 'craft' beer but they are not for me. I was about to abandon it, but to take this picture, I picked up the old bottle and gave it a good read. I learned, as well as being obliged to read a rather spurious "legend" about farm women dressing as sheep and hiding among the flock to try to avoid being raped and pillaged by the local raiders, that this beer is "unfiltered, all natural and bottle conditoned". It ferments in the bottle and lays down a deposit of spent yeast as it goes. "Store upright", it advises, "at 8-10ºC, pour gently into glass. Don't disturb the yeast".

The bees still very active in the warm afternoons, chasing
ivy pollen and nectar. 

Ooops. I'd just brought it home at room temperature, whacked half of it into a French 250 ml glass, glugged away and gone back for the 2nd half. No wonder it was hazy but to be fair I point to 2 'excuses' in my defence. First, you don't expect to have to read the instructions before you pour beer and second, that wordy modern label covers so much bottle you'd struggle to see that you were stirring up yeast; only the head and shoulders and the 'arse' of the bottle are actually transparent!. Ah well. I am being fair too, and I will go buy some more as this is a local producer, and treat it correctly before passing judgement. I can't see that improving the 'acid' and the thin taste but it should sort out the 'hazy' and the 'gassy'. I'll let you know.

Well paired off now - Min and Belvedere. 

Meanwhile back at the ranch, a quick round up of where we are. Liz is still coming and going on her alternating half weeks of house/Dad sitting and work. She was last heard of opening a bottle of Mum-in-Law's Chateauneuf du Pape to let it breathe. Times is hard in austerity Ireland? The bees are enjoying these warm afternoons - I have even seen them 'fanning' to stir up an air flow through the hive to cool it and get rid of moisture while converting nectar to honey. They will be enjoying the ivy which is in full bloom now. Old widow Guinea Fowl 'Min' is now solidly paired off with our new cock bird, Belvedere. The other new bird proves to be a hen and is as solidly paired off with one of the young turkey cocks. She may be our first taste of local Guinea fowl, but don't tell her that just yet.