Giving an Animal an Injection
Posted: July 29, 2013 Filed under: Animal Care, Medical | Tags: Injection (medicine), Syringe Leave a commentAmongst other things, it’s quite a learning process. It’s not fun either. I was very nervous. A couple of our dogs decided to tussle with one of our ranch cats. Normally this cat gets away (which is pretty good for a 3 legged cat). It didn’t this time but it got in a few licks of its own during the altercation. Apparently it’s outdoorsy life has equipped it for biological warfare because a couple of days after the fight, 2 of the dogs started to display swelling where they’d been scratched or bit (go kitty!)(seriously, the dogs needed to learn better… though I doubt they did…). Since this stuff got worse instead of better we decided to give them a shot of penicillin. The cat did get away by the way, it just normally does that before it gets into a fight.
I really don’t want to hurt my animals. I was definitely afraid I was going to hurt them while giving them shots. Given that I had to re-stick them a few times, I probably did hurt them a bit more than a well done injection would have. Sucks to be the guinea pig. Some lessons learned:
1. Sterilization of your injection area is difficult to impossible to achieve. Go with what you can do.
2. Leaving the medicine in the shot can cause it to dry in the needle and clog it, thus rendering the syringe useless.
3. Discovering #2 above can result in shooting the syringe’s needle across the room while you are trying to figure out what’s wrong.
4. It may take several individuals to hold down the dog for its shot.
5. Dogs appear to have less nerves than people do and seem to be able to withstand multiple needle sticks better than I could.
I had to give two of the dogs penicillin injections over a three-day span. By the end of that I actually got pretty good and the dogs were more tolerant as well. After all, it resulted in getting a treat! They both improved immediately so it appears that the right thing was done. Just more ranch animal drama and first time experiences to go along with it.
Injections are one of many ways to administer medication. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Country Wisdom Post #15
Posted: July 28, 2013 Filed under: Country Wisdom Leave a commentThe first time you give an animal a shot you will be nervous and probably suck at it.
– Greg
Ask me how I know this…
This, and the previous Country Wisdom posts could use some explanation. I’ll do a post about it next.
Country Wisdom Post #14 – NEW!
Posted: July 27, 2013 Filed under: Country Wisdom 1 CommentIf you’ve never given an animal an injection you will once you become a rancher. Your live stock might not be the first ones to get the shot either!
– Greg
Unhappy Lamb, Happy Ranchers!
Posted: July 26, 2013 Filed under: Animal Care | Tags: Livestock, Management, Sheep 2 CommentsWhat could cause this you ask? Well let me tell you! Pistol, our indoor lamb, has become an OUTDOOR lamb!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111elevenelevendy!!!! In case you can’t tell, I’m very excited about that. We raised Pistol by hand since early this spring… In the house… It. Was. Not. Fun… Don’t get me wrong, there were good times. Moments of endearing and cuteness of course. How could there not be with a cute little lamb. However… Lambs cannot be house trained. At least not that we could figure out a way to do so. They also chew on EVERYTHING. I guess grazing animals do that. Electric cords and paper were her favorites. We had tried leaving her outside for bits at a time. Even attempted an overnight once before. Have I mentioned how pathetic a lamb can sound when they’re having a bad time? If you’re an animal sucker like we are, it’s very hard to ignore that. Each time, she’d get her way and we’d let her back in.
Now, I know that sheep get moved around and are forced to join other herds from time to time. I suspect they rarely die from this action although I’m sure they don’t like it much. So, after having had just about enough of chewing on everything in sight, we decide to try again. We also had gotten her weaned of the milk replacement. She still liked the bottle but was on 100% water so we knew it was all psychological at this point (who knew we’d be into sheep psychology!). So, earlier this week we started out with her out half the day. She did fine. So we progressed to a full day, and then to overnight a couple of nights ago. She’s officially an outdoor sheep now. She’s not well-integrated into the herd yet but she is hanging out with them a LOT more. That’s a very good thing although I’m sure she’s not convinced of that yet.
We have more lambs on the way it appears so we’re going to have to build some pens and make sure this doesn’t happen again. It’s going to suck even more if we have another orphan as we’ll need to essentially do everything we did for this one only doing it outside. They just can’t come in the house again. It makes it too hard on us. I’ll try to chronicle the construction of the pens and we’ll see how that turns out. Today I have to fix the water in the chicken coop thanks to a certain dog named Balto. I’ve never put pieces of PVC pipe together before but now I get to learn. Ought to be a fun time! Stay tuned, pix to follow.
Country Wisdom Post #13 (repost)
Posted: July 26, 2013 Filed under: General Leave a commentLiving without running water in this modern era is a lot like camping! Camping is only fun when you want to do it though…
– Greg
Country Wisdom Post #12 (repost)
Posted: July 25, 2013 Filed under: General Leave a commentYou’d think your doughnut would taste better after waiting for it behind the only other person in line who wants 4 boxes of assorted and must name each one. It doesn’t!
– Greg
Country Wisdom Post #11 (repost)
Posted: July 24, 2013 Filed under: General Leave a commentA really windy day will show you exactly what parts of your ranch were not well-built. It’s very helpful in this regard.
– Greg
Country Wisdom Post #10 (repost)
Posted: July 23, 2013 Filed under: General Leave a commentBig things like tractors or hay bales look like they’ll just barely fit into small sheds, right up until you try to put it in there.
– Greg
Country Wisdom Post #9 (repost)
Posted: July 22, 2013 Filed under: General Leave a commentOld tractors don’t start…
a) When you need them to.
b) Unless you hold your tongue just right.
– Greg
Country Wisdom Post #8 (repost)
Posted: July 20, 2013 Filed under: General Leave a commentNothing (water heater, cough, cough…) breaks at a convenient time.
– Greg
Country Wisdom Post #7 (repost)
Posted: July 20, 2013 Filed under: General Leave a commentEven a small heard of sheep coming at you at a full run is just a teensy bit intimidating.
– Greg
… ask me how I know this.
Country Wisdom Post #6 (repost)
Posted: July 19, 2013 Filed under: General Leave a commentEmus are klutzes. They also appear to be fairly rugged given how hard they hit the ground. No brain, no pain?
– Greg
… ask me how I know this.
Country Wisdom Post #5 (repost)
Posted: July 18, 2013 Filed under: General Leave a commentYou can tell if a ranch or farm has been maintained by checking to see if the gate hinges have been greased… Or if you notice so much cactus has grown up around a gate that you can’t close it any longer…
– Greg
…ask me how I know this.
Rain
Posted: July 17, 2013 Filed under: General | Tags: Rain, South Texas Leave a commentWe need it and we’re getting it! The last three days it has rained over much of the state. We always need rain. This is the second summer I’ve lived in South Texas where we’ve had a relatively cool and wet summer. Two out of 25. Many more have been hotter than Hades and dry. Nice to catch a break from time to time.
Country Wisdom Post #4 (repost)
Posted: July 17, 2013 Filed under: Country Wisdom Leave a commentA chicken can apparently hold up to 8 full-sized eggs in her body without exploding.
– Greg
This is probably not true. All I can tell you for sure is, I came out to get eggs after missing what I thought was only a day and found this chicken sitting on 8 of them. I’ve never seen them lay more than one or two a day since then.
Country Wisdom Post #3 (repost)
Posted: July 14, 2013 Filed under: General Leave a commentThe same Emu that tried to bite your ear off while you were being kind to it by feeding it so it would not starve to death will happily let you pet it for long periods of time when you do NOT have food in your hand.
– Greg
…ask me how I know this.
Country Wisdom Post #2 (repost)
Posted: July 13, 2013 Filed under: General Leave a comment
When an Emu bites your nose, it hurts!
– Mrs. Miller
… ask her how she knows this.
Country Wisdom Post #1(repost)
Posted: July 12, 2013 Filed under: Country Wisdom, General | Tags: Country Wisdom Leave a commentAnything with (repost) in the title comes from the old blog. As I move Double Portion content over here you’ll see this.
I have decided that living on the Double Portion Ranch is going to produce a blessing of country knowledge and hopefully wisdom upon myself and Mrs. G. Given that, I just can’t help but share you know…
When an Emu bites your ear, it hurts!
– Greg
… ask me how I know this.
Misty Morning
Posted: July 12, 2013 Filed under: General 2 CommentsOne day this week I was greeted with this sight at my front gate:
The beauty surrounding the Double Portion Ranch never ceases to awe me. It changes day-to-day and season to season. This place is definitely my sanctuary. I just love it here.
What The Other Vet Said… (Copper Toxicity)
Posted: July 4, 2013 Filed under: General Leave a commentIf you’ll recall, a few days ago everything seemed to be a non issue with Pistol the lamb and her bloat problem. As it turns out, it wasn’t a bloat problem exclusively. That appeared to trigger a case of copper toxicity. It’s usually triggered by some kind of stressor on the animal, illness, feed change, weather change, bloat, etc… The cause is copper build up in the liver. The stressor causes the copper to dump into the blood supply which causes the blood to not carry enough oxygen (in layman’s terms). In Pistols case, the bloat triggered the copper toxicity which is why the symptoms did not add up. Bloat does not cause red urine. At first it was really more of a brown but as things progressed, it turned red. Then we found it…
The previous owner had several buckets of milk replacer left in the feed shed. They had been opened but we thought nothing of that. There were some extra bags too that we figured he was putting in the buckets. Pistol got fed this for about 2 months, basically from birth. After the buckets ran out, but before the bloat, I went out to refill the buckets with one of the bags. Turns out that the bags contained calf milk replacer. At the time I had that kinda “ding” go off in my head that this wasn’t right and shortly after that everything went to crap with the lamb. Only a week had gone by on the “new” milk replacer. A look at the bag ingredients showed that it contained copper. Not good. A second call to another vet was made. He agreed that it looked like copper toxicity. Hadn’t seen that in 12 years apparently. Most of the meds to treat were not available locally. We found some dolomite but were afraid to try it since it wasn’t pure powdered and we couldn’t find enough sources on the net recommending it for me to be comfortable with it. The vet recommended vitamin E and we had seen vitamin C several times so we put her on that by adding it to her new and correct milk replacer.
A sheep exhibiting sever copper toxicity can get jaundiced (but they can skip that step too). Then they get to where they can’t get up. If it goes further, death is next. Pistol obviously felt bad as she was not her normal, perky, ornery self (yes, she’s an ornery troublemaker!). If she was jaundiced, it was only very slightly. Eye’s and gums stayed close to normal. She was a bit lethargic for a little more than a day and had VERY red large quantities of urine.
Then, she just got better! We knew she was her old self when she started causing trouble again :). Very markedly different behavior when sick vs. normal times. All of us were pretty mad and depressed that we had caused her illness. We know we didn’t know, but that does not fix the emotions. Pistol has become a full-fledged pet, though we hope to eventually get her living with the herd. Her and her friend Rebel will live until retirement here at the Double Portion and will never have to fear going on “that long winter vacation” to the freezer.
Hey, I’m trying to nap here…
OK, I’ll play your silly little game…
As you can see, she’s fine now.
The Double Portion Ranch 
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