Moon, the first lamb born this season, who was named by our friend Bobbie’s granddaughter Charlie, just had a rough few days!
When she came out of the jug with her brother and mother earlier this week and joined the first mixed group of mothers and lambs, we noticed that she was not bearing weight on one of her hind feet. We felt the foot and it was hot and a bit swollen, and we figured her mother had stepped on her in the jug, and bruised her foot. We have seen this happen before. We gave her a shot of the anti-inflammatory, Banamine, and sent her out with the group. Over the next few days, she seemed to be bearing weight on the foot and we assumed it was healing. Then on Wednesday night when we brought the mothers and lambs into the barn, she was holding the leg up and running sideways on three legs, clearly very injured and in a lot of pain. We had never seen a lamb moving like this, and briefly thought that the original injury may have been a cracked bone that now had broken.
Linda swept Moon up into he arms and the lamb went totally limp, as if with gratitude and relief. Careful examination showed that the pain was all in the foot ,which was now quite swollen. We read about foot injuries in our Laura Lawson book and decided it was likely to be a foot abscess. We soaked the foot in warm water with epsom salts and Melinda was able to express a huge amount of pus from the foot. We gave Moon a shot of LA-200 antibiotic, and a Banamine for inflammation and pain, and kept her and her mother and brother in an expanded jug in the lambing barn for the night.
Moon was instantly able to walk on the foot, and yesterday she got around with a minor limp. Today she is walking normally. She will get a second shot of antibiotic and some more Banamine, but she seems to be on the road to full recovery.
We are a bit puzzled about how the bacteria got into the foot of such a young lamb before she had even left the jug, but maybe it did originate with her mother stepping on her, or an infected interdigital gland between her toes. We now will be more aware that a sore foot could be more than a bruise, and investigate for an abscess.
