[Jacob-list] update fly strike ick, ick, ick

[Penelope]

Hi All,
         thank you for the replies.  I felt much better knowing that other 
folks (some of you anyway) thought the melaluca was reasonable.  We did get 
the vets stamp of approval on it during the day yesterday.  But I was still 
pretty concerned until we checked our guy at evening feeding.  He is 
Brookfield Cardeau btw, good tempered and steady, although not a pet or 
used to being handled.
         John caught him at feeding again (I imagine the sheep saying 
"damn, I feel for the feed again!") and we looked at him.  His forehead and 
horns looked much better, some starting to scab over a bit, and not wet and 
icky as it was the day before.  John brought home some disposable pipettes 
from work (very useful things those!  like a lightweight plastic 
eyedropper, but not something meant to be used over, or that I had any 
problem throwing away) so I could drip melaluca specifically where I wanted 
it rather than pouring it on and hoping.  The vet suggested we might only 
want to use it every other day, but because we had seen the most maggots in 
the crevices around Cardeau's horns, I wanted to make sure we'd gotten 
enough in there.  With the pipette I put it in close around the horns.  No 
sign of bigs, but Cardeau did say it was uncomfortable on the worse side, 
which makes me wonder if there were some missed bugs that were vacating 
thanks to the melaluca.  All in all there was quite a bit of drying, some 
signs of healing, and no bad smell, other than the lingering melaluca smell.

         I had wondered about what was commercially available, and thought 
there might be something that was a colored wound dressing that sprayed on 
- must have been the screw worm spray I was thinking of.  But the first 
night we didn't have it and used what was on hand, which I'm very pleased 
to say, worked well.  We have a ton of melaluca oil around because I was on 
their "buy every month" program for a while, and what I though was most 
useful was the concentrated oil.  I didn't dilute it in anything.  I've put 
it on open cuts and abrasions on myself with no problem or pain.  I used to 
work with a midwife who used it to help heal small perineal tears or 
scrapes after someone gave birth.  :-)  So I wasn't worried about making 
Cardeau any more uncomfortable than the fly strike was already making him.

         I'm glad to hear that other people have run in to fly strike in 
places other than the tail.  Fly strike seems to be what is held up again 
and again as the reason for docking the tail.  I like to leave the sheep as 
they are as much as possible.  I feel a little bad castrating rams, but I 
also feel responsible for keeping the breeding under some controls since 
I'm keeping the sheep, so I manage that.  But I couldn't think of anything 
similar as a reason for shortening the tail.  And since a hock length tail 
is one of the markers of a Jacob, I like seeing who has a long tail, whose 
is shorter, and watching the tails move -- those sheep have nearly as much 
control as dogs do at times!

         I think I might try diluting the melaluca to use as a bug 
repellant.  I hadn't thought of that before, but it makes sense.
         Thank you all for the input so far.  We'll be checking Cardeau 
again tonight, well, and every night for a while, but will probably shift 
to applying more oil every other day.  I'll see if I can take a photo of 
his face tonight, in case anyone is interested.  Before and after photos 
would have been good I suppose, but there's too much ick factor, and I 
didn't think of it ahead of time.  Shall I post further updates as we go?


At 03:15 7/16/2003, Mary Ellen Hansson wrote:


-- 
Penelope Jacob pcj at efn.org
parent, doula, farmer, birth & breastfeeding activist.
***War doesn't decide who is right. Only who's left.***
Attachment parenting and planning to homeschool
a busy, spirited, nursing, opinionated toddler.