Saturday, March 10, 2012

Lambing; prolapse + dissection

Lambing again tonight, with Becky + her friend Tara...

We had a ewe yesterday, dead when we got there that had prolapsed her intestines and died.
Tonight we had a ewe with a small prolapse, tipped her and pushed it back it, it popped back out, pushed it back in and it popped out again. We were talking about putting a prolapse spoon in or strap on and then *pop* She ruptured and her small intestine popped out! :(
We quickly grabbed a bucket to keep it clean but knew it was too late her her but maybe we could save the lambs...

Phoned the farmer who came out and agreed, he had to put her to sleep and we did an emergency caesarian to get the lambs out.
They were a couple of days premature and the last thing to develop is the lungs so they were struggling to breathe. One died after about 10 mins but we kept the other warm in the heat box, stomach tubed him some colostrum and he was still struggling but just managing to breathe.
After a couple of hours he was getting better with it and took a bottle and looked like he was going to make it! :)

Being the Animal Scientists that we are, we carried on looking at the ewe and dissected her fully. It sounds a horrible thing to do but at least we got 1 lamb saved and learnt a bit from her; was strange to dissect her and the organs were still warm... we normally get them after they've been frozen!
Was good to see where they are relative to all the other organs too, we get a reproductive tract in a tray, then a digestive tract in a tray, but never see exactly where in the body they are. Think we knew what everything was apart from an organ just on the top of the heart... found out that it was the Thymus!
Got loads of photos to use for future reference.

2012 lamb count: 134 + 30 = 164

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