We hear a lot today from the animal rights people and, in the public's mind they are identified as the people who 'care' for animals.

Members of this forum know, of course, that 'Caring' is more than giving public utterance to ones emotions, but that it really entails nursing and medical care involving long hours with a sick animal. It was during one such occasion, this morning in fact, when a hypothermic and hypoglycaemic lamb was brought to us.

We treated gave it a glucose/feed and wrapped it up in front of the Rayburn, (we don't have the warming boxes). As the morning progressed our emotions, as any reader's would, went through stages of anxiety, cool rational thinking, sadness, hope, despair, hope again, empathy, elation, delight, satisfaction.

This roller coaster of emotions is understood by any stock farmer or smallholder. There was no time to moralise or rush around telling the world how much we 'care.' There was no time to lobby MP's to change this law or that rule. Just the simple task of 'caring for a sick animal.'

Isn't it about time somebody at national level spoke up for the 90000 stock farmers in this country, and told the public about these emotional and action packed roller coasters we travel. I know some country books by farmers and vets do so, but were the NFU or CLA to sponsor a suitable CD programmes for schools, we might then get the public to pay us more for food and at the same time, give fewer donations to those whose activities so denigrate those of us who do care.

Completely agree with this, Peter, farmers are seen by some sections of the community as cruel as people can attribute human behaviour to livestock. Why is that man beating those cows with his stick? when he is merely bringing them in for milking.etc

We had a ewe with suspected CCN the other week, she couldn't eat, drink, stand or even see properly for several days, the vet thought she was a goner but we drenched her several times a day for four days with electrolyte and eventually she recovered. Interestingly when I mentioned this to both farmers and non farmers the response has been "I suppose you put her down" for economic and welfare reasons respectively.

I agree with both Paddington and Peter. 

Was it Samuel Johnson who said of second marriages that they were the triumph of hope over experience?  I know that we always try our best for our stock, often it ends in failure but triumph occurs often enough to keep us doing it.

I'm not sure of the publicity value though.  If people would expect us to cut our losses and not make the attempt for economic reasons, they would likewise think we would only try to save an animal in the expectation of profit!

Jacobus:

If people would expect us to cut our losses and not make the attempt for economic reasons, they would likewise think we would only try to save an animal in the expectation of profit!

I like to believe that economic factors are not the only ones that drive human behaviour, andI guess there are many who would simply try and save the life out of some kind of empathy or altruism towards life itself.

Peter ---  I fully agree with all you say.

             Surely monies for CD's for schools should come from bodies like MLC who are there to promote beef and lamb sales. This would be much cheaper and a lot more productive than spending 100's of thousands of pounds on  Botham and Lamb on pretty  poor TV adverts.

           I think a CD on the births of lambs and calves and how they spend their lives, would be a very useful product.We need something like this, to get past the 'Kill it Cook it and Eat it' programmes, that showed how a small minority of animals are dealt with in this country.

           I for one would be very interested in helping to promote a CD of this nature around schools, I already invite as many schoolchildren and their parents to come to the farm during lambing and calving, then back for a walk around the farm in the summer to see all the animals with their mothers grazing in the fields.

Peter

I've given this some thought and I can't recall ever having seen the behind scenes of caring for stock, which I agree can do nothing but good PR for livestock keepers.  Everything I've seen has been out in a sunny field or at the abbatoir end. 

How many of us have gone into the house with sickly young stock down our jumpers to give them our body heat.  Like you I do not have a warming box nor a rayburn but the log burner in the living room works just as well.  The dogs are well used to their baskets containing wrapped up, sickly youngsters.  No-one realises you've spent the night dozing on the floor next to it or experiences the sheer elation when a sickly lamb wobbles out of the basket and urinates all over you.  Ok we get our failures, but not for the want of trying and it is an emotional rollacoaster,and I suspect that many of the successes become pets and stay on farm. 

The general public neither see nor know of any of this and I agree it might well be time they did!

Well..........   last Sunday night went a bit like this:

12.30 Make sure last lamb born was able to stand and suck, then decide to collapse on the sofa and read until the next visit to the lambing yard at 2.15.

02.30 Find another ewe with lamb feet visible, unfortunately back feet, big ones at that, and she's a first-time lamber; call the wife ( who happens to be a vet).  She finds there are two lambs at least in there, one breech and one reasonably correct.  Shove the breech back in, try to get the head first one out, but its head won't come up over the pelvis

04.00 After over an hour struggling, decide to do a Caesarian,  clear out hay, straw, general grot and tat from the stable, scrub trolley and floor with disinfectant.  Wife goes and sterilises operating kit, cloths etc.  Notice funny snoring noise coming from the corner - turns out to be Eric the hedgehog in his hutch.

05.20 Anaesthatise ewe (first time using Valium + ketamine, then multiple local injections around the incision site: all worked pretty well).  Usual scalpel and artery forceps work, then extract two live lambs, one ram 4.8kg , one ewe 4.6kg.  10 minutes later, ewe is beginning to move her head around, lambs get to their feet & try to trip us up, 2 more layers of stitching required to put the ewe back together (4 total needed).  Discover that half-height wide buckets are excellent lamb immobilisers: just curl the lamb up and put it in. Navel spray lambs.

5.45  Guide very wobbly ewe back to her lambing pen. Make up volostrum and give to lambs, put lambs back with mum, who is looking seriously unwell.  Dose ewe with precautionary antibiotic. Prop ewe up with straw bale so she doesn't squash the lambs while dopey.

6.30  Start next day's feeding & checking round.

 Achieved: one nice young ewe saved, plus two good looking lambs

Costs: Goodness knows, but probably more than the stock are worth.

 What else could we have done though?

                                                        Dick Plumb

PS ewe and lambs now coming along very nicely.

Peter,

I agree that this is a part of farming which does not get a public airing and yet we do these things. Last week saw two vets visits within 48hrs to a 14week old calf and night time checks and feeding. I need to feel that I have done all I can ~ and so far the calf is still slowly improving.

Surely this aspect of livestock farming needs promoting. Who can take this issue and market it to promote British livestock farmers??

its bloody hard work, but rewarding. we had an early birth, from a first time ewe- its taken 3 days for her to recover, a lot of the time was spent syringing liquid life aid to her, she seems ok now, eating again and all that, but no more life aid- now she has the shits!. both lambs died- far to early to lamb. altogether i spent about 3 hours looking after her (not at once though). people need to realise that we never like to put an animal down, even if it means spending a bit on them- its also a bloody hard decision that one has to make, and i bet these people who complain about us couldnt do it!

Had a first time ewe lamb last weekend, she had no milk and a lamb a shade bigger than a rabbit. Strange thing was she was full term, so have no idea why the lamb is so small. Anyway, said lamb is now on bottle with up and down days i've been feeding her every 5 hours day and night. this morning she is not too bright, so maybe it's a lost cause but you have to try.........

Were i used to work we had a Heifer calf get really bad pneumonia over night the temperature dropped for around +20 to around -20 overnight she was quit an old one at them time around 6 months and non of the younger ones got anything. We all thought she was a goner but with a lot of work and aid from a couple of fresh cows we got here back ended up putting here in the kitchen in the house to keep here warm and make it a bit easier for us to look after here spent 2 weeks sleeping on the couch in the kitchen looking after here feeding here every couple of hours with a mixture of milk and colostrum your probably not meant to do that but it worked a treat. when she finally got better we had to start giving here therapy because here legs had just wither away to nothing so she could stand.

stockslave:

I suspect that many of the successes become pets and stay on farm. 

Having just come in from making a decision on emotion rather than sense, that strikes a chord. I was quite hard this year on the ewe lamb replacements and ended up picking some large ewe lambs that had done well with just hay. I then collected up some stores and tried to get them into the shed. Well, this was not a good day for sheep co-operation, and I was about to fetch the useless sheep dog when I hit upon the idea of waving a bucket of food at them. Bingo! Amongst the stores was a lamb I had reared when its mother's udder packed up.Said creature led all the stores into the shed and then came up and rested its head on my knee.

Yeah - well, I guess I'm a sucker but it got put out into a side paddock for keeping. It's not too bad a lamb in truth - what it lacks in size it makes up for in guts - so it may not be such a stupid decision after all.

crazysheep:

Had a first time ewe lamb last weekend, she had no milk and a lamb a shade bigger than a rabbit. Strange thing was she was full term, so have no idea why the lamb is so small

Possibly Toxoplasma infection - or do you vaccinate for that?

could be just that- shes a first timer. you never know with sheep. we just had a premature birth- two lambs, but just too early, they couldn't survive. i got worried about the ewe (so much so i went in 3 days in a row last week). gave her a bit too much life aid, so she got the shits, but shes fine now and eating again. wnet in yesterday, and one of the buggers decided a pro lapse was the order of the day ( my good mate, john took care of that) we actually phoned the vet to ask there opinion, cos the ewe just kept trying to push it back out. got it back in, eventually. moral of the story? don't work with sheep!