Lesson learned

Sunday, was a much cooler day that the past week, so I decided to 'work' the sheep and goats. I vaccinated the ones that need to be boostered, mainly this year's lambs and kids. Check eye lids to see if anyone needed to be dewormed (more on that in another post). Tagged everyone that need to be tagged. And trimmed hooves on everyone that needed it.

Well..... here is where the lesson was learned. Always...... Always!!!!!! make sure the hoof clippers (they look like tin-snips) are ALWAYS pointed away from ALL body parts. ALWAYS!!!!  Can you see where this is going? Well...here is the story. My black shetland ewe needed to have her hooves trimmed. They where not too bad, but still needed to be done. So I turned her on to her bottom and started to trim. She is usually very quiet but she did an unexpected jerk and BLOOD everywhere!! Luckily not hers, but mine!! I had stabbed myself in the palm of my hand! Right into the meaty part below the thumb.

OOOOOOUUUUCCCCHHHH!!!!! Ok, I said a few other words but I won't repeat them here. Since she was only the second animal I had done that morning, I thought great, a nice cool day and I am going to have to go to the hospital and get stitches! Well, I got to the house and rinsed  and scrubbed and rinsed and scrubbed and .........  Once the bleeding stopped I was able to take a good look at it and decided triple antibiotic ointment and a bandade would be fine for now so I could go finish with the critters.

So now it is Tuesday and it feels pretty good. Since I had a tetnaus shot three years ago, I was not too worried about that. I have kept a very close eye on it and change the bandade often.

And, most important, all the critters are vaccinated, dewormed, tagged and hooves trimmed.

Lesson learned is point those darn hoof trimmers AWAY from eveything. Sometimes hard to do!! But I had lots of practice and was VERY aware of what I was doing the rest of the day Sunday!

Have a wonderful day!!!