Well this was a First - sheep with a face full of porcupine quills

I noticed a sheep with about 30 porcupine quills in its mouth, lips, and tongue and ended up pulling them. It ended up not being a big deal, but in all the years I have raised sheep, I have never seen that before.

It was kind of nice to work with the sheep again. Mine are on pasture from April to November so I do not get much interaction with them. Kind of nice to be a good sheppard for once.

For those that have never done this and are interested to know in what was done; we:

Used plies and medical clamps right near the skin to pull the quill straight out
Administered 5 cc of Banamine (injectable aspirin) for the pain
Administered 7 cc of LA-200 for possible infection
Rubbed down the area liberally with hydrogen peroxide

Strange as sheep are not often seen as a threat to other animals a meal yes 😇 Is this sort of thing common with porcupines?

David

I wonder if this was a grazing incident, or if they encountered one another at a salt lick. Porcupines will chew on horse tack in order to get the salt out. Perhaps the sheep tried to run him off.

Grazing animals get bitten in the face by snakes, when they accidentally encounter one another while the animal is feeding.

I have never had this happen before. All I can figure is that the sheep got curious, the porcupine moved slow and she got a muzzle full of quills. It was not a big deal to deal with, but interesting.

I told the wife we need to do a blog. Yesterday we got up early to get my 4 year old daughter ready so she could be a flower girl at a wedding, then my wife had to get dressed up, and I was in the wedding party. We did the wedding thing, then we discovered the quills in the sheep. I thought the wife looked kind of cute pulling quills and playing veterinarian all the while wearing high heels and a festive sundress. That does not happen every day.

So the saga continues...as I said we should have a blog....

We are over at a friends house last night and they are asking us about the sheep farm, and as their dog is running around, they ask us if we have a sheep dog or not.We are like, "No, we would like one someday, but not a Border Collie, but maybe a Great Pyrenees to watch out for the flock, but..."

This morning at 7 AM our cattle dealer calls up and says, "Hey, do you want a Great Pyrenees, a guy sold his goats and wants to sell the dog too?"

"How much", I ask?

"$50 bucks, 5 year old female, worked with sheep ad goats all her life. 2 Fox kills, and chased 3 coyotes off."

"Sure bring her over."

We now we got a LGD for our flock. We don't really need her, but for $50 bucks it was hard to pass up. We will look for another puppy in the Spring so this one can train the other before she gets too old, but for now the introduction started, with me being more worried about the sheep hurting her, then in her hurting the sheep. Seems like the ideal dog so far. Really good around people and kids.

Wow. A dog like that would easily cost $3000 where I'm living.

Consider yourself fortunate because that dog will teach you a lot about having a LGD