Wounded in Action

Melissa has been working so hard this spring that she needed a break. However, she doesn’t leave the farm willingly, so it took two of us to get her off the farm—her brother pulling her toward Wisconsin with tales of the fish they’d catch, and me pushing her out the door.

So I’ve been Head Farmer this weekend, and all has been going well, except for yesterday afternoon, when I became unfairly involved in a Poultry Battle.

In one corner of the fight was Daphne Duck, who recently hatched out 18 baby ducks. Yes, 18. She keeps them together, makes sure they eat and drink, and is a fierce, protective mother. She's in the photo above, nagging some of the ducklings to get out of the pool.

In the other corner was a scrappy little white hen with black spots, whose breed I cannot remember. She successfully hid four eggs from Melissa for 30 days and hatched out four tiny chicks, who run so fast they’re like fuzzy bullets.

The two poultry families usually don’t interact, but yesterday when the feisty hen brought her brood into the barn, Daphne and her little 18 had the floor. The hen led her chicks through the baby ducks, but as a result of all the peeping and cheeping, she decided a duckling was trying to harm a chick. The hen leapt on this tiny little duck and grabbed it and started tossing it from side to side. Daphne was otherwise distracted by another duckling drama, so I threw myself at the hen, batted her aside, then scooped up the poor duckling, by this time flapping in a circle, obviously in distress.

This is when Daphne decided I was harming her baby. She dashed for me. (Here I might mention that a duck has a nasty little hook on the top side of her bill. Makes a very effective tool for grabbing and hanging onto the pudgy flesh just below some humans’ knees. I might also mention I was wearing shorts, something I never do in the barn.) Daphne opened her bill and latched onto me. (Oh, for the marble hard shins of my youth–she never would have been able to grab onto me then.)

I squeaked in pain, put the duckling down, and pulled myself free. Daphne gathered her brood together and marched away. Speckled Hen gathered hers together and stalked away in the opposite direction. I went inside to nurse my wounds, both physical and emotional.

The baby duck is okay, but limps. I know how she feels. I have a gruesome bruise. I may start limping myself soon. By the time Melissa returns tomorrow, I may be on crutches. I’m pretty sure I’ll be out of commission, as far as barn chores go, for at least a month. But at least I’ll get a dandy scar out of the whole experience.

Lamb Hospital

Now that lambing is over, our front porch sometimes becomes the Rising Moon Farm Lamb Hospital. This little tyke is making her second visit to the Emergency Room, getting some work done on her tail. She and her sister were in three days ago to be treated for flystrike.

(Please note: If you are eating at the present time, it might be a good idea to stop for a minute. If you have a queasy stomach, close your eyes and skip the next two paragraphs.)

Flystrike is nasty. Luckily it doesn’t happen that often out here. A fly lays eggs somewhere moist, perhaps in a baby lamb’s manure stuck to her wool. The eggs hatch, and maggots emerge. Here’s the gross part. One end of the maggot starts eating the lamb’s flesh, and the other end just writhes around in the air. This is way more gross than it sounds, the stuff of nightmares.

I held the lamb’s head and shoulders on my knees, and Melissa held the business end on her knees. But since the lamb was only about 20 inches long, I was uncomfortably close to the business end. Melissa sprayed the lamb’s entire rump and back legs with Catron, and hundreds of maggots began dropping off. Then using a tweezers and a Q-tip, Melissa had to...well, extract maggots from the poor lamb’s...well, openings. Poor lamb. Poor Melissa. Poor me.

(Okay, you can start eating again, start reading again.)

This lamb had it so bad Melissa shaved her wool and washed her back end. We treated the sister, then bundled them up in towels. I held the babies in my arms on the back of the 4-wheeler while Melissa drove. We quickly found the mom, standing in the middle of the pasture crying for her babies.

This is always the tricky part. Will the ewe take the lambs back, even though they smell funny? #702 ran up and sniffed the faces of the lambs. So far, so good. Then she sniffed their back ends. Hmmm, something’s not quite right here. But she’s a good mom, so she realized they were her babies.

Today Melissa saw that first lamb limping, so she caught her. Turns out a few very large maggots had gone unnoticed and set up shop in the lamb’s hoof. A few had returned to her tail and needed removing. As you can see by the lamb's resigned expression, she’s getting used to the Rising Moon Farm Lamb Hospital.

If she shows up a third time, however, I’m raising her deductible and excluding certain coverage for preexisting conditions, such as flystrike....Nah, not really. I’ll just kiss the top of her warm, fuzzy head, and her medical debt will be all gone.