His Church at Summer Lake

 

 

Caring for livestock is always a challenge. One morning after a bad storm we found a lamb frozen to the ground. It was covered with ice and its mother was in shock. I grasped it up peeling from the hard packed snow and rushed to the house, grabbing a bucket as I went by the barn.

I filled the bucket with hat water in the tub and plunged its frozen body into the water. Holding its nose and mouth above the water I rubbed its legs and and muscles that were stiff from its struggle and the cold.

Someone fetched a stack of towels we always use at lambing and we rapped the lamb in those towels and laid it by the wood stove. I then went out and caught the mother and brought her into the barn and milked out some of her colostrum into a syringe. I ran a tub down the lambs throat and squirted the warm fluid direct into its stomach. It still had not opened its eyes and laid lifeless on the rocks by the stove.

When we returned from morning chores. the lamb was sitting up. We later that day took him out to the barn and and put him with his mother who began to care for him as if he had never been gone.

We named him Popcicle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When a cow needs help it often requires more effort because of their size.

 

Once we had a heifer that lost her calf at birth and could not stand. If we left her in the field the coyotes would eat her so we had to get her where we could keep her safe.

So we rigged up a belly strap canvas and hoisted her onto the flatbed feed truck where she sat patiently until we could get her to a safe place and care for her until she healed.

Everyday we had to hoist her up, bring her water and feed, until she finally was able to stand again.

She is doing much better and now is out with the other cows.