[Jacob-list] broken horn

[Dennis Schultz]

The beautiful horns always seem to be the ones that get broken.
If we can catch them when it happens, we put 'Blood Stop' on the wound, then gauze pads and then wind 'vet Wrap' around his head to hold the gauze in place for a couple days. 
Denny
Dennis and Barbara Schultz
Green Water Farm 
250 N Jacob Miller Rd
Port Townsend, WA 98368
360-379-0338
www.greenwaterfarm.com
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: ACAMDA at aol.com 
  To: jacob-list at jacobsheep.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 8:12 PM
  Subject: [Jacob-list] broken horn


  Hi y'all:

  About four hours ago (seems like 16) one of our four horned ram lambs (the only one with beautiful horns) completely broke off his right upright horn.  When I saw him a few minutes after it happened, he looked like he had been in a car wreck - blood was everywhere and on everyone.  After much cursing, begging, and chasing, we managed to corner him and let him calm down while we called the vet.  Even after an hour and a half, he was still bleeding horribly (running over his eye, down his chin, into his mouth, eww, eww, eww)  Husband was useless at this point.  At sight of so much blood he had his head between his knees.  Vets only advice was to apply pressure until it stopped.  It took 3 of us to hold him down, while I cleaned him up  enough to see what was what and applied pressure. It seems the outer horn was broken off, but the soft inner horn remained which was spurting blood from the tip. It took about 30 minutes to stop the bleeding using spider webs and pressure.  He is resting now with Mom, and hopefully will survive, which is more than I can say for my clothes.  And my daughter now has a nice story for "what I did on my summer vacation."

  Questions:
  1)  Are there other options for stopping the bleeding?   I sent a search party out for a styptic pencil, but hubby lost his years ago.
  2)  What is the best way to restrain these guys when they need medical attention.  We tried holding legs up, then putting him on his side, but he was always one wiggle away from getting free.  I hesitate to use too much force as I don't want him to die from stress while I'm trying to save him!
  3)  Do I need to do anything else?  Is there a risk of infection?  He probably won't let me within a mile of him, but I could try.
  4)  Since the outer horn was broken off, but some type of inner horn (my terminology) remains, is there a chance it will grow back since he's only 3 months old?  
  5)  Would the bleeding have stopped before he bled to death as the vet said?  Sure didn't seem like it to me.

  Thanks.  It has been a long evening.  Seems everything happens when I have something boiling on the stove. 

  Kathey
  Sweet Georgia Valley Farm 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.pairlist.net/pipermail/jacob-list/attachments/20040602/bb6b2adb/attachment.html