June 9 2017
Some days sort of gather
problems, and yesterday was one of those days. It started all right, and I got all the animal work done in
record time. Just as I was about to return to the house Sari, the youngest
brown goat attempted to jump over the pen wall and failed. Her rear foot caught on the fence and
by trying to kick herself free she got her leg woven through the rails and
ended up with only her front feet able to touch the ground.
I was quickly with her
but there was no easy answer as her leg and foot were sort of woven through the
metal and her own weight locked her firmly in place. I tied in vain to free her
leg but it was impossible. I then
fetched a stool and lifted her up onto the stool but she was not high enough to
make things any better. I tried
lifting her further with a sling but the more I tried the more I could see that
to free the leg she needed to be over a metre in the air. It also dawned on me that even if I had
an extra person to help we would still have a problem.
A different approach
was needed. The section of fence was to locked in with other fence sheets to be
taken down easily so I searched the shed until I found Edd’s angle grinder. I have never used one before but once I
worked it out I was able to cut out the section of fence around her leg and
once on the ground she freed herself.
Amazingly she walked off relatively un-scathed; in fact I think the
whole adventure had left me sorer than she was!
Back at the house I
discovered a young chicken had also been injured and was being attacked by the other
chicks. I sorted this out by
relocating the fit chicks into the pen in Edd’s shed and keeping the injured bird
with me in the house. I cannot
tell if she will survive but at least she has a chance now. From there the day
improved and I had a nice lunch with Bo but on my return I discovered a buck
kid had got out by opening the bars on the bale in the yards. I caught the escapee and then fixed the
bale with extra planks. That seems
to be working, at least in the short term.
Today things are going
a bit more smoothly. I have planted out the elephant garlic and cleaned the
house, both fairly safe procedures.
Sari does not seem to have done herself any lasting harm and the chick
is still alive but not very mobile. We now have three lambs with twins born to
the second dorper ewe. The lambs all play around Zulu the alpaca who they see
as a family member. He looks quite happy about this too. I wish I could move
their feed trough closer to the drive but it is very heavy and took a super
human effort just to relocate from the dam paddock to the closest fence in the
house site.
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