Blessedfarmgirl's Journal

Baymule said:
Do you have any experience with abscesses? If this is an abscess, it will “ripen”. The hair will come off on the top, exposing the skin. Watch closely for this. If it bursts open, it will spread millions of bacteria. If it ripens, isolate her, restrain her and cut it open with a exacto knife or super sharp small knife. Wear disposable gloves. Have a bag ready. Squeeze the goop out on paper towels, put in bag to be thrown away. Clean thoroughly until no more pus comes out. Wash out with idiodine . Keep her isolated until it heals up.
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I do have a little experience with abscesses, we treated one on our ram just like you described. This one is different because it's hard as bone. That's why I'm having trouble knowing how to deal with it.
 
We sold our breeding pair of pigs this past weekend to a nice family with 8 kids. They will probably be spoiled rotten!

We also picked up some goat gold. They have been subject to the torture of eating inferior round bale hay for a few months, so they are very pleased.

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This is how they thanked me:
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blessedfarmgirl said:
I do have a little experience with abscesses, we treated one on our ram just like you described. This one is different because it's hard as bone. That's why I'm having trouble knowing how to deal with it.
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I’m afraid I don’t have much of an answer for you. You are planning on selling her, but a big lump won’t make her very attractive to a potential buyer. A vet bill could easily be more than she’s worth. So you are kinda between a rock and a hard place. If it were me, I’d let her raise the lamb, then slaughter her to feed the family. She would make good pot pie, roast, chili, stew, lamb burgers. Save the organs, including tongue, to feed the dogs. Honor her life by utilizing all you can.

It may sound corny, but when I slaughter an animal, I pray over it, thanking the animal for its life and giving nourishment to my family. I thank God for the good food and for making me a farmer.
 
Baymule said:
I’m afraid I don’t have much of an answer for you. You are planning on selling her, but a big lump won’t make her very attractive to a potential buyer. A vet bill could easily be more than she’s worth. So you are kinda between a rock and a hard place. If it were me, I’d let her raise the lamb, then slaughter her to feed the family. She would make good pot pie, roast, chili, stew, lamb burgers. Save the organs, including tongue, to feed the dogs. Honor her life by utilizing all you can.

It may sound corny, but when I slaughter an animal, I pray over it, thanking the animal for its life and giving nourishment to my family. I thank God for the good food and for making me a farmer.
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Not corny at all! My family does the exact same thing whether it's a sick pet being put down or an animal we're selling or am animal we're butchering. God is good to let us have and steward these animals, and it's good to remind ourselves of that!
We may end up doing that, my family is still taking about it.
 
I have lots of farm news to catch up with. We've been very busy! We sold our ram to a nice family down the road who had 2 ewes. Now we don't have to feed him any more, and we're all set to get our first registered ram this summer! Hopefully he'll be able to get them bred, they were 2 years old, never lambed, and looked a bit over conditioned to me.

Then we slaughtered our first two wethers at home. A dear friend came over and showed us how it was done on the first one, then we did the second one ourselves with him watching. Hopefully we'll remember all this next year and won't need any help at all! I really enjoyed it, and it was a great learning experience. Plus, we saved money.

We also sold one of our dairy goats who wasn't producing as much as we wanted so we could replace her with a higher producing, better quality goat. I found one 3 hours away at a very good price and a huge improvement over my current does. Needless to say I can't wait to go pick her up next weekend!

I also got all my seed starts planted and we mucked out the deep bedding in the goat barn, pressure washed the milk stand and otherwise did a much needed spring cleaning in the barn in preparation for goat kids and my new doe! 2 more weeks to Annie's due date.

So yeah. Been busy. I would attach pics of the butchering but my phone is being stubborn and won't let me.
 
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