Animal husbandry-- the down side

The end of my week turned exceedingly busy, lasting through the week-end, which means I didn't really have much time to sit down and write this blog. Since I had committed to it, I felt I should try to get it down anyway; but it'll be rapidly written and maybe not make as much sense as I usually hope.

It is also the one that if you are tenderhearted toward animals, I suggest you skip and come back another day. There will be a photo at the end that you will not want to see.


The last month has been one of life and death on the farm which is always tough, but this time in a lot of ways that came so close together that it's hard to ignore the emotional impact nor the fact that it's all connected-- life and death.

Given this whole spring, I can't say it began with losing the ewe to the probability of a toxin she had consumed. I came out and saw that a black ewe was down in the alley leading to their shelter. It was warm enough that I knew it could not be by choice. She had her legs straight out, and when I tried to get her up, I could not get her to stay up. I was able to drag and get her to move with great difficulty but got her out of the direct sun putting her in a small pen.

A few hours later a lamb wanted in with her. That was the toughest part of this whole thing as I let the lamb in and watched as it tried to nuzzle her mother's face, then to nurse. Farm Boss did all he could to save the ewe, tried all his tricks when he came home from work after my phone call. He sheared her to see if that would help which her lamb then went to and nuzzled. That always confuses sheep when it's their mother who suddenly is shorn. Now this lamb can make it without its mother's milk by its age but I cannot tell you how upsetting it is that she had to-- and she did as within the day, the ewe died. For anybody who thinks animals don't love each other, they are wrong.

So we went along with the usual, and then came the next very upsetting animal event. I woke up one morning to go out onto the deck when I let the cats out only to see a small cat seeming relaxed and lying in my flower bed. She meowed and came to me when I called to her. Black, manx and went into the house right away, ate, found a chair to sleep in, got along with our two males.

I will tell you that I have wanted my Persia back as a reincarnated cat, which I don't even know can happen; but twice over the years we have lived here, I have had a cat just show up and act as though she belonged. Both I had until they died of old age. So you can see what I had hoped here...

Except almost immediately we realized this cat had something wrong with her, (no details on what) and we knew we might not be able to save her life. We had been planning to go down to visit our daughter's family for the week-end; and we pushed the timing up to that morning to rush down and have our son-in-law who is a veterinarian help us decide if she could be saved.

I wanted her. I felt maybe she was my cat returned to me. It was not to be and the determination was that we could not save her even if we had been willing (and I was) to put a lot of money into her treatment. What was wrong was too severe, had been ignored by someone too long. She had been mistreated by someone, no medical care, skin and bones, by the time she came to me, there was nothing we could do except agree to have her put to sleep, bring her back here and bury her when our week-end was over.

I have no logical explanation for how this cat came to be in my garden, but the loss of her broke my heart because it wasn't just losing a cat I hadn't had long. It was feeling I had back my little buddy only to lose her immediately. Given her age, the timing was right for her to have been born not long after I had lost Persia... But it was not meant to be and I cried a lot of tears over it.

Do animals reincarnate? Given how some are treated by their owners, having a pet we have loved and knowing we might not get them back and someone else might do that to them, well it could make a person hope they do not.

Final incident was coming home from our recent John Day vacation. I had felt we needed to come straight home because of the sheep and cattle. At the house, I stepped out of the pick-up to get the mail while Farm Boss drove it on down the driveway. As soon as he got to the house, he saw in the field a coyote trying to get into the sheep. He ran in, got his rifle and by that time we saw there were two of them. This is really unusual. He got off a shot but missed and they split for the back getting away.

We hoped we had avoided a loss but found a dead lamb down by the creek where that coyote had gotten into the sheep pasture where they are supposed to be safe but were not.

We knew it wasn't going to be the end of the predations; and when he came home early from work Wednesday, about noon or thereabouts, there was another dead lamb out in another field that was supposed to be safe. This one had barely been wounded, all marks that killed it were by the neck. I give coyotes credit for being quick and merciful hunters.

Farm Boss dragged it where it could be seen from the house. We had the guns loaded and ready to go, then came the moment when I had seen the vultures desert the carcass, and told him an eagle was now on it. When he came in to watch that, he saw a coyote coming from the back, leap the fence, and head toward its kill. He aimed his 30-06 and ended its life within a moment. It died pointed toward its kill and only a few feet between their bodies.

There is no joy in this story. Coyotes are only doing what they must; but there is a need to do it when they start killing lambs as there is no stopping them once that begins. Coyotes are beautiful creatures, serve a necessary ecological function for the land; but if you cannot harden yourself to killing them, it's the end of sheep on your place.

The eagle that came to feast on this disaster is the one in the top photo as it soared overhead. Nothing about this is fun to write or remember but it's part of this life and I felt that the emotional ups and downs were important to now and then write down.

There are times I wonder if I can keep doing this as it is so much about life and death and I get that experience a lot more frequently than someone living in town might expect. It's like an emotional torrent at times and then it'll go months with nothing going wrong. This summer wasn't one of those times.