Getting my fill of the rain

So I started getting over all the rain we were getting last night when I had to go hunt up a dog that was lost and injured. Then this morning things got worse when I found Reba laid out in the mud and ice cold. I honestly thought she had passed away. I spent the rest of today trying to get warm and keep Reba and her new baby alive.

So last night Mom got a call from a neighbor that has a dog that had foot surgery earlier this month. It seems she had let the dog out to go potty and it hadn’t returned. She had called and could hear him in the distance but couldn’t find him. So knowing he had a foot that was vulnerable and bad weather was coming in we headed out to go join the search.

We grabbed our flashlights and set out into the night to see if we could find him. After a long search we were very wet and cold but in the end we brought him home. He was soaked and had lost his bandages and was even limping but he was home no worse for wear.

When we got home we both started striping and got a hot shower before we headed to bed. I will say that on cold nights like this my heating blanket makes me happy and cuddly and most of all warm.

This morning Mom and I had agreed to sleep in since we didn’t get home until late. By 8:30am her phone was going off. That woke up the Pig and the dogs. With all that noise going on who in the world can sleep? Mom fed the Pig and started putting dogs out and in and so forth. When I got out to check the sheep and do chores Things went sideways.

I rounded the house and saw Reba in a bad way. She was soaking wet, stiff and to be honest I thought she was dead. I got to her and realized she was still alive and I needed help. I ran back to the house for Mom. She wasted no time getting outside but I thought she would come running to me and Reba. That is when I noticed she was heading for a small white stiff figure laying in a mud puddle at the corner of the pen.

I felt terrible that I had missed it. I was so worried about Reba being down and out in the rain, it never dawned on me why. I watched as Mom scooped the Baby up and ask me if I was okay. I told her to get the baby inside and try and save it. At that point I knew we were making choices that may cost one animal it’s life over another. Mom disappeared into the barn. I turned my attention to Reba. While I had thought that I was going to have help getting her inside I realized real fast that Mom had made a hard choice too. She had chosen the one animal she felt wouldn’t make it if she didn’t intervene.

So I stood there a minute getting Reba turned around and sizing up what to do next. With a bit of help Reba managed to get to her feet and follow the direction Mom had taken her baby. I got her just inside the barn door before Mom showed back up and Reba gave out. She didn’t have the baby with her so I thought the worst.

Mom looked at me and asked if I was okay. She saw Reba laying just inside the door resting And she seemed to take a sigh of relief. She helped me get Reba up and into her pen. She fed her cookies and gave her a fresh hay bed. I then noticed that Mom had the heat lamp clipped to the side of the pen and directly on the baby. It started to lift it’s head to the heat as Mom fussed with it.

Mom and I had a very short conversation about what was going to happen. You see Reba had been penned up so that she couldn’t be bred. With her iron deficiency it is way to hard on her body to raise a baby. That means we hadn’t given her extra iron or her other treatments to help pump her up for lambing. That means she was weak from Anemia. She had lost blood giving birth and there was no way she would survive raising a baby.

So the choice was made to pull the baby right then. We set out to try and save them both. I stayed in the barn with Reba setting up the heat lamp for her. Then I took the time to get a bucket of warm water and load it with Electrolytes, vitamins and minerals. As she started to warm she started to come around. She was sitting up right and holding her head up on her own. She then got a good drink and stood up and ate her breakfast.

It was a good sign and I started to think she would make it. I put down some more fresh hay and left the heat lamp on her and she started to nibble her hay and act like her old self again. I made it inside to tell Mom that I thought she was going to be okay when I found Mom on the floor in the kitchen with the heater on the baby, a Blow dryer warming it up and at least three layers of warm towels sandwiched around him. Mom asked me to go get the heat pad to add to her layers of warm blankets and towels.

I got the heat pad and then set to work warming colostrum for it. The worst thing you can do is feed a cold baby anything cold. It was shivering and so cold. I worked to get the warm colostrum down him to warm him from the inside out. Mom kept up her layering and blow drying to warm him up while I went to get everything else fed.

By the time I got chores done and got back to the house I was wonderfully surprised to see the little guy actually standing up. His Mouth was no longer cold and his body temp was up to normal. As I came through the door the little guy came over to me and let out a little Maaaaaa. I melted.

I headed back out to check Reba. She was doing much better and was even standing up under the lamp. She was munching away on her hay and just seemed to be really thin. I stopped long enough to Thank God for his healing hand. In the course of 2 hours things had gone from looking like we would lose Mom and Baby to looking as if we could save them both.

After I was sure She was doing much better I left the little guy with Mom as I headed to town to get a nipple and some milk replacer. We don’t have any Goats in milk right now and the two sheep that have babies don’t ever produce enough milk to raise another one. And somewhere there is a bag with three new nipples in it but I just couldn’t find it. So Off to town I went.

When I got home Mom got to work and got the little guy drinking a bottle. At this point it was well after noon and Mom and I were cold, wet, muddy, smelly and hungry. So I took over lamb duty and heated the oven while Mom got a shower. After Mom got cleaned up she made some lunch and I spent the next few hours with a baby lamb thinking I am it’s Momma.

We will take all the prayers we can get for both Reba and the baby. But for now here you have him …. Moonstone

I set up a kennel in my room with fresh blankets and a heater for the night. With any luck we will be able to get him on a schedule within a few days. Right now he eats when he want but just little feedings. Just as if he was still with Reba.