From: cf603@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Dave Sill)
Newsgroups: misc.rural
Subject: Letter from a former misc.ruralite
Date: 9 Sep 1992 13:31:49 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: cf603@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Dave Sill)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


I recently received the following letter from a former misc.rural
participant and rural wannabe who's now raising sheep in Virginia.  I
thought it would be of interest to misc.rural (especially wannabes), and
Bernie gave me permission to post it.

Let me know if you'd like me post further correspondence from Bernie.

----
From: Bernie Cosell
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 92 21:56:10 EST

This shepherding stuff is too hard [and emotionally taxing]...  We're in
the midst of a new round of mishap in the almost constant
one-thing-or-another trail by fire we seem to be condemned to endure.
The latest trauma [which has yet to be fully played out] got us
with a reverse-play.   We've had scours a few times already, so mostly
we [thought we] knew how to deal with it, but scours during the summer
are special: the wet, warm, fecal-matted fleece becomes the ideal breeding
ground for flies.  Yes...  our 'education' is continuing at rapid-fire
pace with today's lesson being a nice round of fly-strike.

Now, we'ed read about fly strike and knew it was pretty awful.  But we
weren't prepared for just how truly awful it is, and we were fairly lucky:
we caught it early, and so the maggots were mostly just crawling around in
the wool, but hadn't started eating [yes...UGH!] the lamb [this is primary
fly strike --- the part where they make wounds and bore in is the secondary
infestation].  Between concern for the poor lamb and revulsion over the
generally disgusting mess that had to be cleaned up, fly strike is not
a fun thing.  And it happened in a day: she probably scoured on Monday,
and on Tuesday she was 'struck' and crawling.   But disgusting as it
is, fly strike isn't all that big a deal if you catch it early enough:
you cut away the messed-up fleece, generally clean up the area, and
then generously cover the area with a handly spray that both kills
the maggots AND repels flies [so they won't come back].  The stuff is
neat --- it is bright blue, so our lambs have been running round with
cute blue buns for the last couple of days.

Ah, but I said this was a 'reverse-play', didn't I?  The fly strike
was certainly the most obvious and awful matter to deal with, but we
didn't realize that that was just a diversionary tactic.  We're sure
hoping that our oversight will not prove fatal for the lamb [although
we're plenty worried about that now...].

We were so concerned with cleaning up the lamb's rear ends and gritting
our teeth and and poking through the fleece to look for more maggots,
that we didn't really take proper notice of the fact that one of the
lambs didn't respond to the treatment for the scouring.  As I said,
we've had scours a few times and Lynn was pretty sure that she recognized
the color/texture as being the 'same old problem' [coccidiosis], so
while we were learning/treating/retchingover the fly strike problem, we
were jsut administering the coccidiostat pretty much on automatic pilot
[figuring that that was the least of our problems just then].

Well, the coccidiosis stuff normally works in two or three days [as it
did for the other two sheep who had scours], but it didn't for one of
them [the one that had both scouring and fly strike the worst].  It is
clear now, in retrospect, that her problem was more than just coccidiosis
and we didn't notice... It seems clear that the problem is trouble with
worms [we don't know why: we wormed all of the animals not long ago,
and in the case of the lambs as it turns out they've ONLY ever been on
never-before-used-for-sheep pasture, so the grass shoudl be about as
clean as it can get].  This is a good and a bad conjecture.  The good
part: we know what to do about worms, and will hit the whole lamb
flock [all half-dozen of 'em] with Ivomec first thing tomorrow [Thursday]
AM; the bad part: if it is worms, then it is potentially VERY un-good
for her to have let it go so long untreated... we're distraught
that even the worming will not be able to help her now, but we're hoping:
she is still bright and active, eats like a horse and has not lost any
condition, so we figure that whatever the worms are doing to her, they
haven't yet too-badly-messed her up, and the wormer works REAL fast,
so we've got our fingers crossed.

We don't even want to think about the other possibility: that the cause
of the scours is yet something NEW, and the worming won't help.  I don't
have any real idea what we'll do in that case [aside from panic].

  /Bernie\
------- End of forwarded message -------

-- 
Dave Sill
Play: cf603@cleveland.freenet.edu
Work: de5@ornl.gov
Newsgroups: misc.rural