Absess

This week was HOT!! I checked the thermometer read 107 in the shade one time when I checked on it. The heat makes it pretty tough during the day, but at least we have the creek to hop in as our natural air conditioner. We haven't really had that many calamities this week. Only about 3. First, one of the chicks lost the ability to walk. Apparently it's common with the modern meat chicken. They grow so fast that their legs (and internal organs) can't support them. Regular factory farms combat this with subtherapeutic injections of antibiotics that reduce inflammation in the joints. We put the chick in the brooder with food, water, and kelp (a mineral supplement). The key is prevention, so we put the chicks on a diet, so hopefully they won't outgrow themselves. Then Grant noticed a sheep that was scooting around on its front knees. We caught it and checked the front hooves which were really rotted, so we cleaned them. Grant and Daniel ended up catching a couple more for some emergency hoof treatment, until we can get the squeeze and trim them all. Then yesterday we noticed some bulges on two goats. They turned out to be abscesses, a common goat ailment. We had to quarantine the goats, but one escaped. One of the abscesses burst, and we had to catch the goat, squeeze out the pus, irrigate the wound with iodine, and hope it heals up. The goats are supposed to be fine with them bursting naturally, but we can lance them if we want. We hope that we can lance them, but we have to wait until Tim gets home to get the ok. It was pretty fun doing surgery on the goat, Falfy (Falfy stands for False Malfy because the goat looks like the other goat, Malfy, short for Malformed, due to the deformed horn bud and folded up ears.) We caught another raccoon, but to our knowledge, no chickens died this week. We harvested radish in the evening, and next week you should have some photos on the radish seed cleaning process.