Musings of a shepherd.

Feeling better.

I have been under the weather for the past few weeks so have not felt much like writing. I am now feeling much better so back to the blog atleast and other writing too I hope.

Yesterday I was walking the dogs across the fields as I do every morning, I also take the opportunity to check that all is well with the ewes. I was looking across to the far hedge when something caught my eye, it looked like one of the ewes was on her back. This is a problem that happens sometimes, for an unknown reason a ewe will turn right over onto her back and promptly get stuck. This probably sounds quite funny and certainly looks funny, but it is life threatening. While a ewe is on her back she is unable to urinate and if she is not set back on her feet within a few hours she will be dead due to absorption of toxins from her urine. As the ewes had not been checked since the evening before I was extremely worried for her. I ran round the field I was in to the gate into Home field where the ewes were. From a distance it was impossible to see if she was moving. As I was running towards her I was calling out to her to hold on as help was on it's way, I was so relieved to see her legs move. I reached her and rolled her over onto her belly she was very bloated. I tried to get her to stand but she was weak and frightened, luckily she urinated which is a good sign. I decided to leave her alone for a while to see if she could get up by herself.

I went back about half an hour later and she was up and she had rejoined the other ewes, although she still looked very shaky on her legs. I was so pleased that I had found her in time as it's so upsetting to lose a perfectly healthy ewe just because they can't roll over from their backs. It would also have been a disaster in terms of having the body collected, there is a collection service for farm casualties but not over the weekend and Monday is a Bank holiday so the ealiest the ewe could have been picked up would have been Tuesday. It is very unpleasant having to store a dead animal for more than a day, one of the downsides of farming is dealing with such occurrances. THis time the ewe and I were lucky.

I am just off now to do the evening check of the sheep and horses and trust that all will be well.