Lots of Questions!

Welcome back!

This is your last post for the school year. I'll keep posting during the summer if you want to stop by and visit the blog to see what is going on.

I looked through all the questions you sent and picked some that I haven't answered yet.

We only have one cow. Her name is Echo. We've had other cattle (that's the fancy name for cows) but they were all steers, Echo is our first girl cow.

This is my favorite picture of Echo.

Remi is the dark steer on the left.
You can read a little more about Remi here.

We had to bottle feed Remi when he first came to us because he was so young.

This is Dinner and one of the goat kids.
He loved hanging out with the baby goats!
You can read a little more about him here.

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This is Darcy. He died a few years ago.
He was a very sweet bunny and we took good care of him when he got sick.
We don't have bunnies any more.

If you want to see what happened to Darcy you can read about him here, and here, and here.

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Yes! We have fun in the fall. We work hard in the fall, too!


This is what we like to do after we rake the leaves.

Sometimes we just like to be silly!
That's fun, too!

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I don't know! We might get a girl sheep if Stew dies or goes to a new home. We usually only have one sheep at a time. They have to be friendly so people can pet them.

Stew is happy, and friendly. He likes hanging out with the boy goats.

This is my favorite picture of Stew.
You can read a little more about Stew getting sheared here.

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We don't know exactly how old Clover is. We got her when Matt was in 5th grade. She showed up in front of our barn with two goat kids. When we found out who owned her we told them that they should make their fences stronger because Nubian goats LOVE to figure out how to get out of fences.

The nice man asked if we wanted to keep her so he didn't have to fix his fences.

We did, and we've been so happy that she has been part of the herd! She has been part of the herd since 2006. She was at least 4 years old when she came to us. That means she is about 15 years old.

This is Clover a few years after we got her.
Ginger is the other goat. She died a few years ago.
We still miss her.

Here's a funny picture of Clover.
She's a silly goat!

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Thanks for stopping by this year. We had a lot of fun sharing our animals and our farm with you. I hope you enjoyed it, and that you learned some new things.

I hope you get to visit some fun places. Here's a post about Flat Stanley when he came to visit our farm a long time ago.

You can visit the blog during the summer, too. If you have questions you can type them into the comment box and I'll answer them.

Have a great summer vacation!

Bunny Progress... Good News!

Two photos of the bunny recently. Vet2Be has been diligent about applying the silver nano particles that Hubby has been making and doing research on. Darcy gets it squirted on once a day.

This was taken April 3, 2011.

This was taken April 7, 2011. The 'bunny hospital' is the downstairs bathroom shower.

Here are two earlier photos so you can see the progress.

March 20, 2011. We found the abscess and Vet2Be cleaned it out. We knew the skin above the abscess was dead (it was hard), but knew we weren't equipped to perform that type of surgery. So we cleaned out the infection and waited for Mother Nature.

March 28, 2011. The dead skin from the abscess came off one side. Vet2Be took the entire dead part off.

The first two posts about the bunny can be found here (Not For Weak Stomachs!) and here (Bunny Update).

Bunny Update

Here's a link to the first post about Darcy, the bunny with the abscess.

Vet2Be spends every other day in a traditional High School, the other school days he is home or volunteering at the local veterinarians. On Monday I picked him up early because Darcy needed some medical attention, and I wasn't going to be the one to do it.

This is what I saw when I went to do chores in the morning. The dead part of the skin had started to come off the top of his head.

This part needs to be removed. We didn't want to cut this part off while it was still attached on the other side. We knew it was dead because it was hard, but since we haven't done this type of surgery, we thought we would wait a few days to see what happened. The yellowish stuff on the skin flap is the infection that has dried and crystallized.

Everything all ready. Scissors sitting in alcohol, plenty of cotton swabs ready to clean any infection and prep the area, chlorhexadine (the blue liquid) in the cup.

After cleaning all the infection off the skin (using the tweezers and chlorhexadine) Vet2Be was able to cut through the dead skin with some very sharp sewing scissors. The scissors weren't sharp enough to cut through the dead skin and the crystalized infection together. No, the bunny didn't jump or squirm. He didn't feel anything, he's a very calm bunny.

You can see the bits of crystallized infection on the towel. This is Darcy's head after the dead part was cut away.

We sprayed the infected area with silver nano particles because Vet2Be wasn't thrilled about the idea of administering penicillin to his bunny for the next 6 weeks. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want a shot of penicillin every day for six weeks, either!

One of the businesses that Hubby is involved in starting produces specialized silver and gold nano particles, completely different that the colloidal silver you can buy in the store. This is much more effective at killing infections than anything else that is on the market.

I can't describe how they do it yet because the process is being patented. Suffice it to say that there are four Ph.D. scientists involved and all are highly trained in different fields. They have come together on this project and it is amazing what they are finding out with their experiments!

Curious about the silver nano particles? This is Darcy's head about 10 hours after the the picture above. Dramatic improvement in a short time.

10 hours later the wound had begun to shrink, the swelling was down, Darcy was moving around normally and not hiding in a corner. He was eating and drinking normally, too.

We'll continue to apply the nano silver for the next few weeks. We'll post as Darcy improves. We are hoping that his skin will grow back over the top of his head and that he will be back to normal in about 6-8 weeks.

If this treatment works, we have some friends that raise meat rabbits who will be very, very happy! No more antibiotics for abscesses!

NOT For Weak Stomachs!

The photos are at the end of this post, if you have a weak stomach, please don't read the rest of the post! The reason I am posting this is to provide information about abscesses to other hobby farmers who might have either rabbits or bunnies. I'm not posting to gross anyone out. My blog is also my 'Farm Journal', to remind us of what we did when, what obstacles we were able to over come, and what we were able to learn.

I debated even posting this, but my 10 year old niece thought it was interesting and she learned alot from it. So, I decided it was okay to post.

Vet2Be's 4-H leader told him a long time ago that if you have livestock, sooner or later you will have dead-stock. We've been pretty lucky and not lost too many animals. Probably because we've been diligent about learning what we can about them.

The photos that follow are of Vet2Be's bunny, Darcy. In the winter the bunny's cages are protected with wood on all sides so that they can stay warm. We also don't take them out very often in the winter. They seem to like to bed down in the winter and be left alone.

The weather has been warming up a bit and we took the boards down. We didn't notice over the past few weeks that Darcy had only been sitting with his left side (and good eye) towards the front of the cage. We found Darcy with a huge abscess! Abscesses in bunnies are soooo hard to get rid of! We know, we've tried before.

This one had just ruptured, and it was quite large. It took Vet2Be about 90 minutes to clean out the wound.

I would never in my wildest dreams thought I would be able to handle something like this 6 or 7 years ago. We've learned so much about animals and how to take care of them. We've also learned it is our responsibility to do the best we can and learn as much as we can to take care of the 4-legged friends in our care.

The following pictures are very graphic--if you have a weak stomach and don't like the look of infections, then stop reading right here and come visit us another time. I promise to always warn you if I think things might be too graphic.

Just so you understand our choice of words..... bunnies are pets. Rabbits aren't pets. That's how we, as hobby farmers, tell the difference between the two words. We have bunnies that were orphaned when their previous owners couldn't take care of them anymore, we have never raised rabbits.

Here are two links to information about abscesses in rabbits that have no photos.

Ontario Rabbit Education Organization

Use of Penicillin to Treat Abscesses in Rabbits

Here come the photos.....

Bunnies don't have the same enzymes that we do, so their infections can't drain the same way ours can. It is about the consistency of toothpaste--really. Vet2Be took out quite a bit.

This was a large abscess.... especially for a tiny bunny. How did it get so big? The bunny sat in the cage and only looked out of his left eye. Since it is winter, we never saw the other side of his head until we removed some of the boards that were protecting the cage during the winter. We never noticed that he always looked at us with his left eye.

This is about 1/2 way cleaned out. Vet2Be used Chlorhexidine 2% solution on the Q-tips. That's what they use at the vet's office to prep for surgery as well as clean out wounds. The wound itself is about 1/2 the length of a Q-tip. Chlorhexidine is the same antimicrobial found in Hibiclens.

Darcy (the bunny) put his head inside the towel about 2/3's of the way through the procedure. He needed a break. He was a really, really good bunny! He sat very still for almost all of the procedure.

After the wound was cleaned out, Vet2Be put neosporin inside. We've been keeping an eye on it and will continue to clean it out daily.

Nope, this didn't gross Vet2Be out at all. He's watched so many surgeries at the vet's office, and watched them treat so many wounds that were worse than this, that he just did his job and it didn't bother him at all. In fact, he looked up at the clock about 50 minutes after we started and it surprised him that so much time had passed! He said that now he understands how a vet can do a surgery that is long and repetitive without going crazy. The techs get tired because they aren't doing as much .

By Thursday morning Darcy was hopping around his cage like he does every spring. He acted as if there was nothing wrong with him and hadn't been through such an ordeal on Sunday. It was great to see him standing on his hind legs and begging for a treat! Bananas and carrots for the sick bunny! Yay!

It was interesting to read about penicillin being used to treat these infections. Vet2Be will check with the vet he volunteers for to see if it would be okay for us to try penicillin on Darcy. When we took care of an abscess on a bunny a few years ago we never ran across anything that said we could use penicillin on them. I'm glad that people are continually able to find better ways to help animals heal.