Thin yearling

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Sun hiding how thin she is, there's no muscle on her. Makes muscle injections really tricky...
20190921_162201.jpg

Tatiana ran over to eat the drench!
 

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Got her in a sling to keep her upright and in sectioned off barn corner.
Water, hay, grass pellet, 18% lamb pellet and a little camilid feed that has lots of molasses in it in 3 piles to choose from.
She's been snacking every 5min or so. Was out there for almost an hour. Hopefully, she'll be able to keep herself fed and build energy and muscle now.
Will put her down if I don't see improvement in 2-3 days.
 

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Let her down for the night to sleep and she proceeded to suffocate herself instead.
RIP Tegan, born with no chance of a normal life.

Vet came out to do a necropsy.
She took many tissue samples to have sent out.
Lots of barberpole worm, vet says that she was way too genetically weak & that I should avoid sheep related to her. So, now I know to avoid sheep from her line when I buy new sheep like the plague.
Also had loose fluid in the body cavity, which I found a couple days ago.
Old lung infection.
Rest looked fine.

Picture of barberpole worms, if you've never seen them before-
20190926_104051.jpg



I will do a final update once the results return.
 

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A lot to process...

Still waiting on rest of report.

Biggest potential issue is copper poisoning.
Why?
Because we are on well water and if it's in our water, it will be incredibly expensive to filter it for everyone...It has me wondering about the rabbits I had that didn't "breed like rabbits", as they say.
It also causes lack of sex drive in humans. :eek: Think copper IUD for birth control and the common side effects.
If we have copper, that explains a heck of a lot of things happening here.
Fixing the water for people to drink will be easy. Fixing it for 5 horses and 30 sheep will not. Fish will have to get over it.
I'll look into rain catchment systems and how on earth to keep it liquid for winter use! :idunno

Next is mesenteric fat necrosis, tall fescue fungus poisoning. Not just a breeding horse issue!
Hard to find a ton of info on this, but what I found seems to match with her getting thin in summer! Same with horses getting slobbers from clover in summer/fall. Already looking into fertilizing and overseeding the paddocks with safer grasses, so, hoping to get that done soon and that will help.

Some staph & pneumonia in the lungs, shrinking lung size. I noticed that they looked small, oddly not proportional to body size. I was remembering rabbits and ducks I've butchered and this sheep didn't seem to have enough lung for the size of her body. I recently butchered a ramling for dog food and his lung size was noticeably larger that Tegan's lungs! I looked them over for awhile because of that. He had lumpy fat as well, but I didn't think to feel them to see if it might be hard and caused by fescue, as I didn't have the info I do now.

I think that's everything, but I may be missing things. This place really is a black hole and soul sucking. :hit
 
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