Jinx's sore foot

Diary

Posted: Friday 5 September, 2008

by Rosemary at 9:24pm in Sheep 2 comments Comments closed

We noticed this week that Jinx was a bit lame on her near hind leg. We sprayed the foot with a "kill everything" footspray and waited. By Wednesday, she was a bit better but not fully recovered so I got the vet out. I wanted to be sure I was trimming their feet properly anyway. The vet said it wasn't anything specific - like footrot - but her foot had an infection brought on by the wet weather. He trimmed off the damaged bit, gave her an antibiotic injection and sprayed on the same "kill everything" stuff that we had. That was Wednesday; Thursday morning I trimmed a bit more off her foot, washed it with antiseptic disinfectant and sprayed on the spray. Today, we did the same and I think she's a bit better. The foot certainly was less hot today. We'll keep this up for a few more days and see how she gets on.

On a similar note, Dan and I took Meg for a walk tonight through the fields of the farm where I keep Smokey. The yard owner doesn't keep any livestock but rents the fields as grazing. The fields we were walking through were full of ewes and lambs. In the field of ewes, 50% of those I saw move were lame. Two were crippled and falling over. I was in tears. I spoke to our YO who told me he had already reported it to the SSPCA. We did the same when we came home.

A while back, a senior officer in the NFU suggested that hobby farmers and smallholders were putting livestock welfare at risk. Really?

When our YO returned from holiday, he took nine dead sheep out of the fields and reported it to the SSPCA. Another local farmer has a number of the ewes at her farm, where they are recovering from fly strike. She has also reported this. A local dog walker has reported the cases after his wife spent days feeding and watering a sheep that was unable to move, until it was humanely destroyed. The SSPCA are, apparently, trying to build a case...