Its all in a day's work

What I did on Mother's day.....

We wormed all the sheep and lambs. The little boys got banded (this makes them wethers, i.e. its) and spent the afternoon laying in the shade and crying for their moms. By evening they were up and eating and none the worse for their experience. Next week everyone gets the CDT shot and the lambs get ear tags. I also need to start shearing. I have so much to do around the house with the sheep and dogs and keeping the house clean (impossible) and wouldn’t you know that I have to work overtime/weekends for the next two weeks. Ugh.

One of my beautiful Border Leicester ewe lambs has goopy eyes. I noticed when she was born that they looked different, but determined that she could see because she blinked when I waved a hand in front of each. Recently they have been getting very watery and goopy, so I started putting an antibiotic ointment in them. Yesterday Andre mentioned that her eyes still looked bad. We looked closer and I think she has entropion eyelids. This is when the eyelids are inverted and the eyelashes are scraping the eyeball and this causes irritation and eventually can lead to blindness. I read up on treatments and first tried to tape the eyelid down but I couldn’t get the tape to stick. (I thought duct tape worked for everything!) The next option and the one that most of the books I have recommend, is to inject penicillin into the lower lid (hers is just the lower lid and that is typical), which forces the lid out, away from the eye. I’m not exaggerating when I say this scared the beejeesus outta me. But I had the needles and I had the penicillin, so I did it. I had visions of poking the poor baby in the eye, but I just held the needle parallel to her skin and pulled out a pocket of skin and injected .5 cc under each eye. It did what it was supposed to do. She had two little bumps under each eye and hopefully will get relief from the eyelashes. It is supposed to leave some scar tissue that will keep the eyelid from inverting again. I followed up with antibiotic ointment. I’ll be keeping an “eye” on this one. I’ve named her Helen. She going to be a beautiful girl for wool, but I won’t breed her because this condition can be hereditary. Her mother Bitty had twins last year and they didn’t have a problem.