Insehn FARMS

It’s taken us a while to deal with our grief of a losing three of our prize mamma ewes.
But I feel it’s worth sharing our pain and a very expensive accident, in hopes it’s a gentle reminder how quickly things can change on your farm.

We had an incident couple weeks back where I, as the mum take full responsibility of the chain of events,

During lambing and kidding season those times where you’re just exhausted and for the first time in 15 years, I decided to make a poor choice and leave grain out in our fenced area by shop, instead of locking it into the shop as I would normally.
I was exhausted, sore and no rain in site. No harm right.
Wrong.

The next day, Jay and his friend went down to help with chores and check on any new babies.
I went down after within 15 mins.
Hell, had broken loose!
The gate that again, I take responsibility for a certain way to be shut unfortunately, it wasn’t shut a certain way, and our girls knew such and when the boys walked away, they popped that gate open and got into the grain!

The boys very quickly got them out of the grain but at that point, the grain was gone, I came down and didn’t even put two and two together because the boys had it under control, until I went to move that grain. I thought the boys did it for me because the grain was gone, then it hit me OMG staring at my herd, who all got into it. Very quickly the s**t hit the fan, as signs of bloat were noted with two already.

I started immediately treating for bloat on two mama goats and several mama ewes, and one pregnant ewe.

My treatment started for all was pouring baking soda in piles, for those that didn’t look bloated as the seven.

Very grateful for my mom and dad calming me down and their support and advice, Linda Hancock
My daughter, son, my son-in-law and I continuously to work on the seven, a trip to the Vet and many many hours of tubing and walking and burping them, we seen improvement in most.
I spent the night rechecking and re-administering
Bloats cocktails. But sadly efforts were not successful in all.
Unfortunately, we lost within the first 12 hours “ La Fonda” our last ewe of our very first flock at a ripe age of 15 yrs. And her baby 😞.
Within the hour after we lost “Mossey” a ewe that we had for many years, and within that night, sadly we lost “Nova” , a ewe that was Jay’s we bought for his bday present couple years ago.
Absolute utter heartbreak 💔

Very grateful for my children to step up and spend many hours and helping, very grateful that we saved the rest.
Heartbroken that we lost the three with Reminders of the loss daily moving forward bottle feeding their babies…

I have since fix the gate and I will absolutely never give the kids s**t for climbing over Gates anymore,  and no matter how tired or sore I am I’m never gonna leave grain out😢
A very expensive heartbreaking lesson, I hope sharing this is a reminder on a farm no corner to be cut no matter how tired you are:(