Lamb Injuries and Treatment

#bfrdpwy #aginternship #RightRisk

We continue to graze the sheep and supplement them with corn and mineral, as we finish up these last couple weeks of the GrowinG-WY internship. We have been refilling creep feeders more frequently, as the lambs progress further in their growth. We decided to pick up some larger feeders that hold about 3 times as much creep to help reduce the time continually refilling the feeders.

Most of this week has gone well, but we did have a lamb that injured one of its legs. I caught the bum lamb and applied a splint to its leg and are hopeful for a full recovery. Later I found another lamb that had a large cut on its shoulder. We aren’t exactly sure what caused the injury; it’s hard to tell as lambs are a bit clumsy and with ewes around just about anything can happen. I caught the cut lamb and gave it 2cc of Oxytetracycline for infection, cleaned the wound with Chlorohexidine, then applied wound spray and spray to reduce the chances of flystrike. Although these are both bad scenarios, the ability to treat these lambs provided me experiences and grew my confidence further in my ability to treat sheep.

Although I felt confident in what I had done to treat the lambs, I still have some questions such as: how easily can you overdose a lamb on medications; how well can a splint heal an injured limb; besides fly strike, what other infections should I be aware of and how do I treat them; is it better to isolate the lambs even if they are not weaned or should you keep them with the rest of the flock; will this disrupt their development or are they fine as long as they are on creep?

Once again, I’m grateful for this week of my GrowinG-WY internship. I will take what I have learned to continue to grow my confidence in sheep treatment and care. As I have stated in previous work summaries, I plan to take sheep with me when I leave my host ranch. I have had an increasing amount of responsibilities as I have continued to work through this internship. Having such, I have been pushed to adapt and overcome various problems of my own. Those experiences and issues are what teach us the most, if we are not pushed to solve issues with livestock on our own, we will never learn the best ways to handle the situation.

Submitted by: Elijah Richardson
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team