One Friday afternoon in the spring, around 3PM, my daughter Marie called me at work. She said she found one of her ewes, Chortle (who has markings that looks like she is chortling) hanging around close to the lean-to instead of out with the flock grazing. Then she looked around for Chortle’s ram lamb. When she found him, he was not able to walk due to his front leg being either broken or pulled out of joint for some unknown reason. Chortle was staying near her baby, being a good mother. Marie asked me what she should do, and I told her to call ARC, the local vet clinic, and see if we could bring him in. They said no because he wasn’t a dog or cat, but that they would have the vet call her when she could.
When I got home, I told her we would go see if the emergency room doctor for the local hospital, who lives around the corner was home. We talked with his wife, who told us he had already gone to work, and we didn’t think he would appreciate us bringing a lamb to the emergency room. We then went to the emergency room nurse who lives two doors down, and she wasn’t home either. So, we went back to our house. By that time, Marie said that she thought maybe she could fix it herself, but that we had to buy a piece of PVC pipe because she had read about how to do it on the internet. As we were in the driveway, the vet called, so Marie talked with her. The vet asked her if she wanted advice or for her to come out, and Marie said she guessed she wanted advice. So the vet told her what she needed to do and what to watch for in the ram lamb (temperature of lamb, temperature of leg, not too tight or loose wrapping.)
We then went to Stover Lumber and asked for a short piece of PVC pipe. We took one piece out to the car to see if it was wide enough for the lamb’s leg. It wasn’t, so we found another piece that was the right diameter and ended up even being the right length. It cost 69 cents. We then went to our next door neighbor Tom, who has every tool you can think of, and asked him if he could cut the pipe lengthwise for us. Then we would have a “U” shaped piece of PVC to lay the lamb’s leg in which we would wrap. He got out a hand saw and started to cut only one side. I realized he didn’t quite understand what I had asked for and told him he needed to cut both sides. He said that would make it easier, and cut it in half.
We took the cut PVC pipe home, and prepared for the procedure. Rosemary, my youngest daughter, got a towel to wrap around the lamb’s back legs. She held the back end, while Sarajane, my middle daughter, held his head still and I held the top of the lamb’s broken/disjointed leg. Marie started to pull on his leg gently and said that she was afraid she might pull too hard. As she was pulling, she said “I won’t pull too hard” - it was a lot harder than she thought. The lamb lay perfectly still and didn’t even make a peep. Marie said if it had been a goat, he would have been screaming. We all heard and felt a “snap” when the leg went back into place. Then Marie laid a piece of thick cotton cloth inside the PVC pipe, and laid the lamb’s leg in it and wrapped it with pink vet wrap up and down his leg. We took him back to his mom, and he didn’t use his leg for a few days. After a while, he used the PVC pipe as a crutch to move around so he didn’t look like he was limping so badly. By the end of three weeks, Marie decided to take his cast off and see how it looked and acted. When she first took it off, he wouldn’t use his leg, but she was able to bend it a little and felt it would be all right. After a day or so, he started using it a little more. A week later, Marie came and told me that you couldn’t even tell he had been injured and that he was walking normal. I told her she should call him Achilles, after the Greek god, as his weakness is his leg, though Achilles weakness was his heel.
