Blog Worthy?

We were sitting on the porch Friday night with my brother & sister- in- law and I was telling them about how we tried to worm our steer Little Man. My sister- in- law asked if it was blog worthy.Hmmmm, I think it is. Thanks Gale!

Parasites are a huge problem. We have learned this the hard way by losing a sheep and close calls with some of our lambs last year.This winter Bubba (cow) got worms so bad he almost didn't make it. Now, we are on top of it & keep a close eye on everyone by doing routine worm checks.  

So, Little man looked a little thin and I said "I bet he has worms". Mark agreed & also thought we should move him to a pasture with more grass. Little Man is very skittish. He will come up to us for grain & we can lure him around with the grain bucket but very rarely can we touch him.We managed to lure him threw the gate & lock him in the 12 x 14 run in. This was no easy task because we had to slowly convince him to follow the grain threw the gate.While  keeping the horse & ram in.

We grab the only wormer we had which was a shot. OK, Mark thinks he can get close to him & stab it into his hip.There's only one problem, the shot is SQ.Meaning under the skin.I suggest we look for a different wormer & just send him into the new pasture for now. Mark says, "You give up to easy". Whatever, I am not going in with 700lbs of crazy cow!  Mark gets Little Man in a corner, puts his hand on him & he spins around. "You are going to get kicked. It's not worth it". Mark did get it under the skin once but Little Man spun around before he could squeeze any in. So far so good, at least Mark hasn't been kicked or run over yet.

So our barn is divided in two.This division is made with pallets (I keep saying one day we are going to build a pallet barn, because we are always using them to make pens & divide up spaces). The bottom 1/2 is pallets & the top 1/2 is chicken wire. We are on one side & the other side is where we just took Little Man from.

Well, Mark keeps trying....then Little Man decides he's had enough. He jumps up  & puts his front foot threw the chicken wire. Then to our amazement he keeps going, right threw the wire & over the top of the 4 foot pallet.Now he is back where he started & we just wasted at least  half hour.

This time we lure him back threw the gate & into the other pasture. A few days later I buy a wormer mixed in grain. We walk up to him & he eats it right up. Total time = 5 min. & zero chance of bodily harm.