Get Away to the North Shore/Harwell's Bad Morning

Here's a shot of Stan during our recent jaunt up to Grand Marais, MN.  This was taken on artist's point and I don't need to tell you that I didn't go up there myself.  I know it wasn't dangerous or hard to get up there, I'm just not a fan of heights. While I appreciate the awesome beauty of the lakeshore and the rocks, I have to say, I find that landscape cold and heartless and somewhat frightening.

I've never liked heights, boats, bridges, or airplanes. I just like to keep my firmly feet on the ground.  So the walk along the top of the wall out to the lighthouse had me taking baby steps and trying not to look out at the vast expanse of water on one side or down at the rocks below on the other. 
Then yesterday morning the sunlight coming through the clouds shining on the ram pen caught my eye and I had to get out there to photograph it.  The colors were amazing, but the lighting was too low and this is what I got...I'd love to do a painting of it.  That's Socks on the left, he's Lena's twin brother...on the right is Harwell, the fence jumper. 
I found Harwll Saturday morning hanging from the fence by one hopelessly tangled back hoof.  At first I thought he was dead - I didn't know how long he had been hanging there. It was awful.  I ran and got the hoof trimmer to cut the panel away from the post that was holding it up and when I did, his body flopped to the ground.  Then the panel was at an even worse angle for his ankle.  I had all I could do to position the 16 foot hog panel in such a way that I could extract his hoof without breaking it.  He was in obvious pain, only making a few groaning noises as I worked on his hoof.  Once I got it loose he just rolled onto his back and laid there.  I rolled him to one side and ran into the house for NutriDrench, Banamine, Vitamin B Complex and a quick call to the vet leaving a message for her to call me back.

When I returned he was on his back again, I flipped him to the other side and that seemed to help a lot. His head came up and I gave him some NutriDrench.  I was starting to get the Banamine injection drawn when the hussy Shetland ewes came closer to the action, I couldn't believe that Harwell got to his feet and tried to limp toward them!  I got them out of there and offered him a little alfalfa hay.  He must not have been hanging upside down long, because he had a good appetite.  The vet called back and advised Banamine twice a day for three days to keep the swelling down and to keep him separated from the ewes for a while.

I gave him one shot of Banamine and he was feeling pretty good, his limp was much better and he even jumped that same fence again as I was tying it back up!  He was after Hattie, our oldest Shetland ewe.  She was very happy to stay with him while I got the rest of the Shetland ewes safely behind a 6 foot high fence as far away from the boys' pen as I could get.  So all is well that ends well, looks like we will have some Shetland Mule lambs in March along with the BFL lambs.  I turned most of my panels so the narrow spacing is at the top now and we were able to take our trip as planned the next morning without having to worry about more Banamine injections. Harwell still has a slight limp, but he jumps between  ram and ewe pens at will. I'm just glad the Shetland ewes are all safely behind the tall fence.