My sweet little Darla is still struggling with the abscess on her neck. I took her to the vet again this week to have it lanced. I've been treating her with penicillin (the only treatment for this bacterial infection) for 2 weeks and it doesn't seem to be working. The vet gave me 3 options. She said we could do surgery to remove the whole section of her neck where the abscess has grown but that would be expensive and risky since it's so close to her carotid artery. Second choice is to euthanize her (ouch, not ready for that yet), or lance it again and hope this time it goes away. She recommended giving it another shot and hope for the best. That's what we did. Pray for Darla.
I also took her mom, Luti, to the vet because she just seems so skinny and anemic looking. Turns out she is slightly anemic and not due to worms like we might have thought. Bloodwork didn't show much more than her iron was low and her white count a bit high. A culture was sent off for testing also. So I wait. Luti seems fine in most ways, still giving 1/2 a gallon of milk in her morning milkings. She just looks too skinny. Her 2 boys, on the other hand are thriving and getting huge. No wonder she's so thin - they're taking all she's got.
And then there's Chy, my mama donkey. She began limping 3 days ago. Good golly, what now? I was beginning to think this farming thing isn't for me. Something did come to light with her limping though. Chy now trusts me!! I put a halter on her. Actually, James put it on her while I held her. I tied her to a post and then held my breath as I reached for her leg. I just knew she was going to kick me because she has never liked her feet touched, as you may recall from a previous video of her with the farrier. Well was I surprised when I ran my hands down her leg and ever so easily picked up her foot. Yup, just like that, she let me pick it up and clean it out with a hoof pick. I didn't see anything unusual, not that I knew what the bottom of a donkey's hoof should look like, but there were no sharp objects or cracks in it. The farrier came out yesterday and trimmed both hers and Shiloh's hooves. Today she's walking better, with just a slight limp.
Some good news, I put the 6 chicks in an outside coop with a heat lamp and they seem to be doing really well. I had to put them outside because I have 20 more eggs in an incubator which are due to hatch tomorrow and they'll need the tub the other 6 were in.
One of the 20 in the incubator decided to come a day early. She/he's a feisty little thing, peeping a lot. I hear more peeping from the other eggs but none have holes in them yet. I'm fairly certain we're going to have a much more successful hatch this time. I candled the eggs and all of them look viable. We'll see.
We've had lots of good rains and some warm sunshine too so our grass is growing like crazy. Maybe this will be a good hay year. That's something to be happy about. James' garden is also thriving. We've added asparagus to our meals recently - one of my favorite vegetables. I wish we had even more. We eat salads most every day because we have lettuce coming out our ears. Tonight's dinner was salmon (I wish we could raise that) on a bed of wilted (in a good way) spinach and arugula.
Today James and I took the dogs to the field to get some exercise. It's their 10th birthday and they still run like young dogs. We sat at the picnic table by the river and watched as it rushed by, carrying all kinds of interesting and uninteresting things. I wonder how many of those tires will make it to the ocean. The buttercups and grape hyacynths are in bloom so we picked a few.
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