Exposed bone injury

Hi all, I’ve got another post but wanted to post with a new update and ask advice. Our 8 month old st croix lamb was attacked by stray dogs 3 weeks ago and had what looked like puncture wounds to the neck and on the right shoulder/elbow area where the leg meets the chest. We did all the things to see if she would survive as she didn’t have anything that looked or felt severe but she was really swollen and just laying down but refusing to stand and put pressure on her legs and holding up the attacked leg. Her sister had to be culled because of way more severe injuries. We did things like antibiotics we already had on hand, blue cote, vetericyn, colloidal silver, b complex, nutridrench, screwworm spray, aspirin, and I’m probably forgetting some. Slowly but surely she has gotten better in that now she’s up and down multiple times a day and out grazing, despite still having a limp. She eats and drinks and follows her new sheep “sis” around all the time. Night and day difference and we thought she was gonna definitely pull through. It definitely got infected despite our best efforts and we’ve been trying to flush it out and clean it daily.

In the first week, she started to lose hair on a huge portion in the area of the bite on her shoulder. Then the skin started to feel almost hard and leathery. I figured that top layer of skin was unfortunately dying off and would have to heal from the inside.

In the past week or so, the edges around the leathery spot had started to crack and reveal some raw flesh edges which we continued to clean and put some colloidal silver, vetericyn, and blue kote and even neosporin at times.

Fast forward to a couple of days ago and each day the edges started getting bigger and bigger, revealing more raw skin underneath but pink healthy skin that looked like it was healing. We knew at this point this whole layer off dead skin would peel off soon.

Today, the whole outer dead skin finally peeled off….. the skin is pink and is a huge amount of exposed raw skin which I feel so bad for but it honestly looks like it has been healing since the injury. The concern is this.. when the dead skin peeled off it revealed a portion of exposed bone that appears to be part of the scapula where the muscle/flesh must have died around it in the beginning. Her whole front portion of her shoulder and side is now pink flesh with probably 2.5in of exposed bone.

I hate to cull her now after she has made so many improvements and shows a will to live. She has even been putting pressure on that leg for about a week now and uses it to hobble around and I have not been giving any pain meds in the last week. I know the flesh can eventually heal up but can it grow over exposed bone when the area surrounding the bone is the exposed flesh? There’s no skin to cover it or anything to sew up. None of the bones are broken but all hair and skin is gone. She’s literally healing from the inside out.

Husband says we will give it time to see if she is improving still now that it’s exposed and to watch the wound closely to see if it’s healing or getting worse. I don’t want to prolong the inevitable if it is impossible to heal up at this point. A vet trip would cost more than the animal is worth unfortunately even though we love this sheep. We have to be practical. Again, flesh looks like it’s healing, no longer infected, but still pink raw flesh exposed.

Mostly asking, has anyone had a sheep or other animal heal with exposed bone? I know most probably just cull because of time vs reward but we didn’t know what was underneath the whole time until today when it opened up or I probably would have made the hard choice to cull earlier because of the hidden injury underneath. Loving your animals like pets instead of a business is hard

Should have kept this with your original post, it makes more sense to me, to tie it all together.

I’ve never had a sheep with an injury like that. And you are right about the cost of a vet being more than she is worth. Most of us do our own vet work but some things are more than what we are capable of.

Sheep are notorious for hiding pain and sickness. Predators pick off the sick and injured. That’s why you hear people say the sheep was fine yesterday and dead this morning. Or, sheep are looking for a place to die. So if she is in pain, she may be hiding it.

Is she still not able to raise and move her head due to the neck injury?

The exposed bone is worrisome. It may lead to infection so keep doing what you are doing. Call the vet for antibiotics. Explain what happened and ask for a shot of long lasting antibiotic.

Post some pictures of the wound.

I can't be sure what I'd do in your case without a pic and I'm not a sheep person but personally I'd keep it covered and moist with antibiotic ointment. Keep the flies off it and out of the wound. Maybe it will granulate in. Consider keeping her on some kind of injectable antibiotic if you have it. If you want to try and she wants to try there's no harm in trying.