The Soay Sheep Chronicles

Neither traditional dictionaries nor any of the numerous websites that trace the history of “Break A Leg” have seen fit to include lambing in their list of definitions, or Soay lambing as a possible source for the expression.  They obviously haven’t been reading this blog.

Breaking a leg sure brought Venus good luck.  Last year, with her leg intact, she delivered a pair of mouflon boys.  While they were very cute and grew up to be very handsome, they were still not the black Soay we were hoping for from Venus, who in Steve’s genetics jargon is an obligate carrier for self-coloration.  Translation:  her mother was black.

But give this ewe a broken leg to contend with and boy does she ever rise to the occasion.  She not only produced a black lamb last week, but a huge healthy one at that, the biggest lamb we’ve ever had at a stunning 7 pounds 9 ounces (more than 3 times the size of Otley, for example).  I don’t know how many of you out there have had a broken leg, much less given birth with a splint on one leg, but I find it downright impressive that Venus managed her delivery, cleaned and completely dried off the lamb and fed him, all without our even knowing it had happened.   Here’s the happy pair, Venus and Tolleson, shortly after Steve jugged them [Side note:  I’m sorry I missed the jugging dance, with Steve stumbling backwards and Venus lurching forward].

By the next day, young Tolleson was wandering around the jug and Venus was behaving as though lambing with an immobile leg is the most natural thing in the world for any half-capable Soay ewe.  Look at the size of this lamb.  Most one-day-olds have to strain just to reach the ewe’s udder, for heaven’s sake.

It’s a good thing Tolleson is so big and robust, because we realized we needed to get Venus out and walking around as soon as possible after more than two months in spaces no bigger than 5 feet by 5 feet.  For the last week she and Tolleson have had the run of a corridor about 25 feet long and 5 feet wide adjacent to the jugs.  In this picture, Venus is doing laps at a most respectable clip, with Tolleson jogging along beside her.

We have no notion what we will do if we ever have another animal with a broken leg.  At this point, we are simply relieved Venus came through all of this alive and healthy and her lamb is alive and thriving.  Maybe when we get the lambs vaccinated and weaned and turned out to pasture, I will contact Wikipedia and suggest they modify their interminable lists of definitions and sources for “break a leg” to include “may ewe have a successful lambing.” 

But for now … 

Several readers kindly have inquired after the progress of our pregnant ewe Venus and her broken leg.  After we got her home on Friday and into the tiny cubicle pictured in my earlier post, we pretty much left her alone, thinking complete rest would be best, and we did not want to give her a chance to throw the cast off again.  In retrospect, we should not have left her so confined for so long.  By Tuesday she was listless, would not stand up, crumpled back down when Steve tried to hoist her, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t drink water, and gave every indication of having lost her will to live.  We did not know whether her legs had simply fallen asleep, or her muscles had already started to atrophy, or she was perilously hungry, or thirsty, or what.

Our keen disappointment that we might lose Venus after such a good fight was nothing compared to the fear that we may have unknowingly contributed to her decline.  Concluding we had little to lose, we decided to get her out of her tiny confinement and take a chance on a slightly larger area where, if she had the will to get up at all, she could more readily move enough to get some circulation back into her legs.  We figured if we left her where she was, she would wither and die anyway, so the risk of having her fling the cast off again seemed the lesser of two evils.

As you can see in this picture, we put Venus in a ring of sheep panel we use as a substitute for our “jugs” when we cannot easily move a new lamb and ewe or for any other reason we need a small catchpen for a short time.  It is not secured to the walls; we literally roll it around as needed.  By dumb luck, it turned out to be just what Venus needed.

For a couple of hours she lay inert, even when we put yummy grain under her nose.  Then to our great relief, she must have decided it was “safe,” because she heaved herself up and actually got on her feet.  I couldn’t believe it.  She looked utterly perplexed.  What were the strange sensations in her legs?  What was that awful thing on her back right leg?  No longer, apparently, a charging coyote, because she did not try to fling off the cast as she had before.  But then she saw the water bucket and something clicked.  She stumbled over and drank, and drank, and drank.  Clearly she had gotten severely dehydrated.

Next she managed to drag herself to the edge of the circular pen, leaned into the side of the ring just a little, and lurched in circles around the perimeter, exploring her new world and trying out the leg in the cast.  It was remarkable to watch what is reputed to be one of the dumbest animals create her own rehab program.  Even more amazing was the size of the pile she deposited once she had taken her constitutional.  No wonder she had been listless!  No wonder our doctors tell us to drink 10 glasses of water each day! 

It’s now Thursday and Venus is doing quite well.  She is thin, but still pregnant.  And she is curious about the new lambs on the outside of her confinement ring.  No telling what tomorrow will bring, but

For now …
 

Just when we thought we could relax and wait for lambing to begin, Steve came back to the house looking agitated and clearly worried. He discovered one of our pregnant ewes, Venus, in dire straits in the Maternity Ward. Here’s his report:

 ”When I first saw Venus out of the corner of my eye, I thought one of our ewes had lost her mind, standing on three legs, holding her back right leg straight behind her and shaking it furiously. Not until she paused momentarily did I see that her leg was broken between the hock and the dewclaw. When she shook her leg, her foot twirled around at a 180-degree angle, rather like a swivel club. This was not right. What to do.”

Once Steve was able to enclose Venus in the shelter, we quickly assessed whether we should try to save her, realizing the odds were not great of managing to keep her safely pregnant long enough to deliver, yet keenly aware of the likely expense of treatment. We will never know for sure what path we would have taken had she been an ordinary ewe, but Venus is carrying a genetically valuable lamb so we elected to try to save her.

These are hard questions, somewhat to our surprise. Soay are utterly endearing and we love having them, but when you start talking about x-rays and casts and more than 10 or 15 minutes of a vet’s time, the expense can swamp the value of the animal and then some. If we had only a few Soay, we might seek intensive vet care for every problem, but with over 100 sheep, we really have to be somewhat businesslike about prioritizing when and how much to spend on husbandry.

Off to the vet went Steve with Venus in a dog crate, the Soay shepherd’s one-animal “trailer.” An x-ray revealed a clean transverse break in the middle of her metatarsal bone. Back he came with Venus in a full-leg cast, complete with an artificial “hoof” made by daubing some quick-hardening epoxy-like stuff on the tip of the cast, complete with the two points characteristic of a real hoof. So far so good. But immediately upon landing back in the Maternity Ward, Venus began to flail again and banged the cast against anything she could find. Steve fashioned a small enclosure, about 4 x 5 feet, within the shelter using bales of straw. He gave her a bucket of water, some hay, and left her to heal. Here is the first recovery room.

As near as we can tell, Venus interpreted the pain in her leg, and perhaps the weight of the cast as well, as a predator attack. From the outset, she had tried to shake off what had “grabbed” her. Whatever her nightmares were, she managed to work the cast off overnight and we found her the next morning still in her little recovery room, but with her leg once again unset. The cast was intact but thrown off to the side of the enclosure. Either she had shaken it off, or wedged it somehow, giving her purchase, and pulled it off. It was back to the vet for another cast, this one under “warranty,” thank goodness. The vet sawed the cast in half, re-cemented it, applied it somewhat tighter than before, and sent her home with pain medication but no sedative since she is pregnant.

Steve’s nothing if not a quick learner, so as we drove to the vet the second time, he talked through a better confinement arrangement. Clearly it needed to be much smaller, about the size of the dog crate or even narrower if possible, to prevent Venus from having any room to swing her leg and kick off the cast again. The dog crate had two drawbacks, instability and the air vents on the sides, which could catch the artificial “hoof” points. But Steve remembered a piece of our Shaul panel system we use only occasionally, 2-foot wide contraptions called “alley supports” that form each end of a makeshift “lane” for moving animals between pens. Why not make the sheep world’s shortest lane?

And that’s exactly what he did. Using two 5-foot panels and the two alley supports, he got the enclosure down to about 2 x 5 feet. A single straw bale tipped on end brought the length down to just over three feet. A single scrap of 4 x 4 inch “horse” panel cut to size formed the “gate.” Three scraps of plywood covered the three sides of Shaul panels so there would be no slots where the cast could catch. Here’s what the new outpatient facility looks like.

All that remained was to get Venus out of the truck, out of the crate, and into the recovery room. The whole barnyard was concerned. Here’s Isaac, our Anatolian shepherd puppy, following the gurney (a.k.a. garden cart with dog crate – nice fit, eh?) into the Maternity Ward.

Here’s Venus with her cast. Woebegone, isn’t she?

Here’s Venus in her little stall.

And finally, here’s Llucy, ever the faithful guardian llama, checking on Venus to make sure her pillows have been fluffed and her bedpan, uh, make that water bucket, is in place.

It’s 48 hours later and the evening lamb check, which of course now includes Venus, confirmed that she made it through another day without kicking off the cast. We are hopeful. Stay tuned.

For now . . .