Am I doing this right?

[Guest pax]

One of my lambs got her back leg stuck in something last night. I don't know what but it's easy to see.

 

She is limping. Bearing weight but obviously not comfortable. I am hoping it is a soft tissue thing she got from thrashing.

 

I caught her, washed her leg, and sprayed Blue Kote on the places it got rubbed and abraded.

 

I am inclined to give her something like Banamine but thought I would ask the experts first. And if you were going to do it, would you do oral paste or injectable? And if by jab, do I need to hit the vein on this lamb (which will require some major freaking effort since they are not pets) or can I just pop her in the thigh?

 

It's too early in the day for me to ring my sheep guru...(that would be Renee).

[Guest pax]

Oh my god, now my husband is out in the barn making a scale so I can dose this thing appropriately. This ought to be good.

 

 

 

I do love my geek man.

[kelpiegirl]

Hi

One thing- sometimes pain is not a bad thing. It will keep the lamb from using an injured leg- and quiet, which is what she needs to do. I wouldn't treat her just yet, unless she is CLEARLY in pain. Keep her quiet- if possible, and see how she goes.

Julie

[C Crocker]

Hi

One thing- sometimes pain is not a bad thing. It will keep the lamb from using an injured leg- and quiet, which is what she needs to do. I wouldn't treat her just yet, unless she is CLEARLY in pain. Keep her quiet- if possible, and see how she goes.

Julie

 

 

 

If she/he were mine I would give her banamine, once cc per/100#, same as a horse. You can give it im. I would use it sparingly , not daily , not long term, as like a horse might get. Maybe one shot, then another the next day after assessing the improvement or lack thereof. I have used it up to 4 or 5 days but try and keep it as little as possible. You can also use bute (oral fine) but sheep react negativeley to it so that I really use sparingly. Just a tiny piece from a one gram pill, depending on lamb's weight. I also use B complex for anything that needs any treatment for any problem. And if I use any of the above, I also use a probiotic. All this may seem like overkill, but sheep do seem to be sensitive and stress out easily from illness or injury.

 

 

I am far from an expert on sheep, owning a smallish flock of 50-60, but fortunately my equine vet treats them and has guided me along.

 

Good luck.

 

Carolyn

[Bill Fosher]

Banamine is a wonder drug. While I agree with Julie that pain is a great behavior regulator, Banamine is also an anti-inflammatory and in some cases the inflammation can be a problem in and of itself by restricting blood flow to an injured or infected area. Inject it IM at 1 cc per 100 lbs once a day for three days.

 

You may also want to splint the leg if there's any chance it was broken, but given the abraded skin I'm suspecting it is more likely soft tissue or perhaps a joint injury that will resolve itself fairly rapidly.

[Guest pax]

Thank you all.

 

I agree that sometimes pain is a good "keeping them still" remedy, she was obviously in pain. I gave her a cc of im Banamine and she was much better.

 

We'll be keeping an eye on her and I seperated her and DumbBrownLamb out when I worked sheep last night...they hung in the shed while the big girls earned their keep.

 

I appreciate you guys helping me out.

 

 

 

 

Carolyn, I agree with you on the Bute thing. I don't like to use Bute because it can make a horses' gut so upset. I have one or two that get their 2 tabs a day and it keeps them comfortable, but they get Gastro Gard with it. How does it effect the sheep?

[kelpiegirl]

Please keep the updates coming Hopefully a few days of down time and momma Celia's TLC, will fix her up in no time

Julie

[Guest pax]

Well she was much better last night. I have not repeated the Banamine since the second dose, which in a horse can last for 6-8 hours so I'm assuming at this point she's both drug free and more comfortable on her own, both of which are good.

 

My husband is so chuffed with his weighing in sling that he has now weighed everything in the place that will hold still for him.

[C Crocker]

Well she was much better last night. I have not repeated the Banamine since the second dose, which in a horse can last for 6-8 hours so I'm assuming at this point she's both drug free and more comfortable on her own, both of which are good.

 

 

 

How is your lamb doing?

 

 

As for the bute, my vet told me once, maybe two doses every other day is about it in the sheep. I use banamine more freely than bute , but neither with near the frequency that I do with a horse. I do use alot of probios with both the sheep ( and horses and dogs even ), especially while treating them for almost anything.

 

I have had horses on not so low doses of bute for an incredibly long time, and try to give milk of mag, probios with it. You are nicer to your horses giving them gastrogard!

 

carolyn

[Bill Fosher]

What is Bute? I thought it was more tranquilizer/sedative than an anti-inflammatory, but I've never had much truck with horses so I don't know.

[Guest pax]

Straight up anti-inflammatory. Think of it as aspirin, it works essentially the same way, right down to aggravating your tum. If you have one that tolerates it well, it's a god send to the old campaigners, and nice because it's relatively cheap. No tranquilizing or sedative action at all. You can use it for fevers but it's not the first thing I'd reach for. Use it long enough and they can get a bit run down and poorly, it can compromise their immune systems.

[bcnewe2]

i used bute on Mick the dog when he was so sick with TBD's. I tried rumidyl and other antiflamatories but nothing worked like bute. I gave it with food and he was fine with it. Made the difference in him being able to walk or not.

 

I use banamine on my sheep almost anytime I have to medicate for other issues as it seems to help get them on their feet quicker. But I'm not quick to do much about a lame sheep that I think has an injury unless it doesn't get better on it's own. Illness would be another issue.

 

I thought bute was the horse equlivent to asprin, which would explain why it's rough on their stomachs but tell me about it compromising their immune systems?

 

Kristen

[Guest pax]

I don't know how it works. I'm sorry. And I may be wrong. What I *think* is that Bute surpresses white cell production. But I don't know how long they'd need to be on it, or how much of it, to be a real issue.

[Bill Fosher]

I just love Wikipedia: phenylbutazone is an NSAID, and its metabolite oxyphenylbutazone is the highest scoring word in Scrabble. I just can't quite imagine how you'd get there -- it'd take four plays at a minimum.

 

but

zone (with one space between but and zone)

phenyl a (filling in the space between but and zone with a)

oxy (appended to the beginning of the whole mess)

 

Anyone else see another way to get there? What do you suppose the odds are of having PHENYLA as your hand at the exact moment when the words "but" and "zone" are on the board separated by a single space and having nine blank spaces in front of "but?"

 

---------------

 

But I digress.

 

Wikipedia doesn't mention anything about immuno-supressive qualities, although it could be argued that anything that reduces fever is interfering with immune response.

[Guest pax]

Was it Friday Night Scrabbleganza at your house last night, Mr. Fosher?

 

I've been trying to think of ways to keep my hands busy at trials, maybe I need to bring a travel Scrabble set.

 

I'm sorry that I don't know how it works, it's just been my practical experience that thems on the 'bute tend to get more other stuff...URI, etc, in addition to the normal and expected tummy issues if you use it long enough.

 

Here's the fix:

 

omeprazole...it'll only take you two turns if your luck holds, and it's what fixes the ulcer issue

 

 

 

Now, re my lamb...she still has some swelling and I shaved her leg...(oy, that was a trick! ) and am rolling DMSO on it. I know, it's overkill for sheep but you know, I have the stuff lying around, I have an animal with a fat leg, what's a few minutes work? I don't intend to go into serious sheep breeding so my wimpy dmso-ed girlie girls aren't going to deteriorate the gene pool much.

[bcnewe2]

Skip the scrabble game and give it to the sheep! I'm the player that uses ox or zap to score big! Guess you got me beat Bill!

 

Pax, did you ever figure out what happened to the ewe to have a swollen leg? Could it have been a snake bite or spider bite? In our case, injuries heal pretty quickly, usually less that a week. I wonder if she broke the leg? For that my favorite fix is pipe insulation and duck tape!

 

Scrabble on

Kristen

[Guest pax]

Nope...but half their turn out is an overgrown pasture...junk treees, old stone walls, lots of vines, snarls of old wire I haven't found yet, although I've pulled out about enough to wire here to Mars so far, I think.

 

I don't think it's a bite because there's a clear abrasion circling her leg right above the hock. I looked for teethmarks specifically, but a circle around seems to me it is more likely she just got stuck someplace, don't you think?

 

 

The lamb that got hurt is the lamb I let Taz (my 5yo) name so she's been destined to be a keeper from the start. Doesn't hurt to get her a *little* accustomed to being handled, I guess. Her name is...*swallow your coffee so you don't snort it all over your keyboard*....her name is Princess Fiona Apple Muffin #1 Lamb.

[bcnewe2]

Better than when I let my at the time 6 year old name our first bottle babies. Chip and Dale. After about 6 months not being the wonderful Mom you must be we changed their names to Lunch and Dinner. The 7 year old, now 15 still tells that story but he laughs when saying it so I guess we didn't do any lasting damage! Plus he has no problems eating our lamb chops!

 

FWIW Don't let your sheep become to friendly, the dogs will hate you for it. Plus they're so cute when they're little then when they become big ol' sheep they aren't so cute when running up to you for a scritch. Been there done that. We don't name anything that has wool. They do get nicknames but after a while you forget which one was which unless it's a particular nasty ewe and they always get the same nickname. All the boys are now affectionatly called Chip or Dale then on to Lunch and Dinner.

 

Better to find the darn wire now, instead of letting your mower or tractor find it later. I thought we'd found most of ours, the tractor didn't agree and neither did Mick. The tractor is in the shop (waiting for parts but at least it's DH's shop) and Mick had a nice infection from finding some more old nasty barbwire. I think it's like our rocks, we grow them!

 

Haven't seen a complete circle around a leg but it does sound like she got it stuck in something. Hope PFAM gets better quick. Is the circle almost gone? I had an old ewe cut her nose right through to the nasal cavity, I thought she might bleed out but after leaving her alone cause me messing with her was making it bleed worse, you could almost not see the cut within a week. I was really surpised how quickly it healed. I was also really suprised at how much blood a sheep nose can splurt out.

 

The joys of sheep

[Bill Fosher]

Oh, dear. I have created a misimpression. I am far from a good Scrabble player. If I score over 200, it's a good night. The info on oxyphenylbutazone comes from Wikipedia -- I don't even know if it's true or not.

[PSmitty]

Her name is...*swallow your coffee so you don't snort it all over your keyboard*....her name is Princess Fiona Apple Muffin #1 Lamb.

 

[juliepoudrier]

FWIW, here's what the Merck veterinary manual has to say about bute: Phenylbutazone:

One of the earliest NSAID approved for use in horses and dogs, phenylbutazone is a pyrazolone derivative available in tablet, paste, gel, and parenteral formulations. The plasma half-life of phenylbutazone is 5-6 hr in horses and dogs and >30 hr in cattle. When given PO, phenylbutazone absorbs to hay in the diet, which may reduce GI absorption and bioavailability. Once absorbed, binding to plasma proteins is high (99% in horses, 93% in cattle). Phenylbutazone is metabolized by the liver to several active and inactive metabolites, which are excreted in urine. One of the major therapeutic uses of the drug is the treatment of acute laminitis in horses. Laminitis is treated initially with injectable phenylbutazone at dosages up to 8.8 mg/kg, followed by therapy PO at 2.2-4.4 mg/kg, bid . Because the therapeutic index for phenylbutazone is relatively narrow, dosage should be adjusted to the minimum possible to maintain comfort and avoid toxicity. The ulcerogenic potential of phenylbutazone in horses is greater than that of flunixin meglumine and ketoprofen. Phenylbutazone dosages of 3-7 mg/kg, PO, tid, are recommended in dogs. In dogs, phenylbutazone has been associated with bleeding dyscrasias, hepatopathies, nephropathies, and rare cases of irreversible bone marrow suppression.

 

And here's a reference on immunosuppression, from J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 277, Issue 2, 1509-1513, January 11, 2002: "Nonsteroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs Suppress T-cell Activation by Inhibiting p38 MAPK Induction*," Silvia Rossi Paccani, Marianna Boncristiano, Cristina Ulivieri, Mario Milco D'Elios§, Gianfranco Del Prete§, and Cosima T. Baldari¶

From the Department of Evolutionary Biology, University of Siena, Via Mattioli 4, 53100 Siena, Italy and the § Department of Internal Medicine and Immunoallergology, University of Florence, Viale Morgagni 85, 50134 Florence, Italy.

 

For the complete article (if you're of a scientific bent and want to read the study), go here.

 

In addition to antagonizing inflammation by inhibiting the activity of cyclooxygenases (COX), nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) block T-cell activation. The immunosuppressant activity of NSAID correlates with their ability to block transcription factors required for the expression of inducible response genes triggered by T-cell antigen receptor (TCR) engagement. Whereas the inhibition of nuclear factor-B by aspirin and sodium salicylate can be partly accounted for by their binding to IB kinase-, the broad range of transcriptional targets of NSAID suggests that the products of COX activity might affect one or more among the early steps in the TCR-signaling cascade. Here we show that the inhibition of NF-AT activation by NSAID correlates with a selective inhibition of p38 MAP kinase induction. The suppression of TCR-dependent p38 activation by NSAID can be fully overcome by prostaglandin E2, underlining the requirement for COX activity in p38 activation. Furthermore, the inhibition of COX-1 results in defective induction of the COX-2 gene, which behaves as an early TCR responsive gene. The data identify COX-1 and COX-2 as integral and sequential components of TCR signaling to p38 and contribute to elucidate the molecular basis of immunosuppression by NSAID.

 

Okay, now you can go back to discussing Scrabble!

 

J.

[ItsADogsLyfe]

Oh, dear. I have created a misimpression. I am far from a good Scrabble player. If I score over 200, it's a good night. The info on oxyphenylbutazone comes from Wikipedia -- I don't even know if it's true or not.

 

and in order for it to be the highest scoring word in scrabble it would have to be played on a triple word square. Well I'm certainly going to try for that word next time I play!