So what happens when you have a medical emergency on the farm? Dial 911? Load up and go to the hospital? Or do you just Google “broken sheep leg”?
In our case, we Googled “broken sheep leg”. It was time to move the sheep closer to the house and after a day of prepping the barn and getting things ready we went out to walk the sheep from the back pasture to the barn. One of the yearling ewes (female sheep) was walking towards the fence with a noticeable limp and holding her right rear hoof up off the ground. Odd, because just 24 hours earlier all the sheep seemed fine. No one had gotten out of the pasture and she didn’t seem to be hurt in any other way.
Not being able to take a closer look, we led the sheep across the field and back to the barn. She limped along but was able to keep up with the flock pretty good while still favoring her injured leg. Once back to the barn, we moved her to a stall where we could take a closer look and figure out what the problem was.
Now that we had her in a stall, we took a better look at the injured leg. It felt a bit deformed and was limp but above the lower ankle bone. All signs seemed to point to the fact that somehow, some way she had broken her leg.
So now what? We have both been in the healthcare for over 25 years. We’ve both splinted broken bones and Saundra has taken more x-rays of broken bones than one would care to count, but never on a sheep. Like any responsible person living in the information age, we called on our good friend Google. According to Google as long as it wasn’t a “compound fracture”, meaning the bone hadn’t broken through the skin, splinting was an option that usually yielded positive results. The sheep would need to be in the splint for a number of weeks. She would need to be kept separate so there was not additional injury. We would need to keep food and water close by and provide regular checks on the splint to make sure it stays in place.
Ok…………splint. How do we do that? Just like in a person, the joint both above and below the break would need to be immobilized. Commercial splints are available but we needed something now. Time to improvise and hit the local drug store for supplies.
We found a piece of fence picket that we cut to length for the splint. Picked up some cotton padding (cast padding for all you medical folks), some gentle wrap (coban) and tape. Armed with tools of the trade, time to go to work.
We were able to get her onto her side and carefully apply the splint. After padding the leg with the cotton padding, we placed the fence picket on the back of the leg, over the padding and wrapped it with the gentle wrap and secured with tape.
She’s still in the stall and we are making sure she is keeping the splint on while getting some rest from the rest of the flock.
So now we wait. All the articles we read seems to indicate she should have a full recovery. She’ll stay in the stall until we can be sure she is able to get around on her own safely and stay with the rest of the flock.
Updates to come.