Things Happen On A Farm

Things took a lot of time this morning so it was 12:30 before we could think about eating. Nothing new and not a problem. Then Jack came to the back door and said those words I hate to hear, "We have a problem." Oh no.
One of our Jerseys had cut her foot and scraped the one behind it. The front one was bleeding pretty good and she had sliced a chunk of flesh loose. We had more rain last night (yep, again) so there was a lot of mud in the pasture where she was at. Jack wanted to bring her up on grass to clean the wound and then put her in a higher pasture. O.K. First, get a rope and make a halter, put it over her head, and start leading (pushing, pulling, and coaxing with a bucket of feed) her through the front yard to the other pasture. Slow going until...... she decided to take off with Jack hanging on to the rope. Now, we've got a rodeo!!! YA-HOO!!!!! (Was it the swats I was giving her behind?) Tie her to the fence and wash the wound, pour hydrogen peroxide on it, and, because there was some blood stop powder handy, we used it for the bleeding this time instead of cayenne pepper. I like to use cayenne because it numbs the pain and I know it's good for them and it works well. We haven't had much experience with the powder but it worked, anyway.
I made a comfrey root decoction and then added comfrey leaf to it and let it steep while we ate brunch at 2:45. Whew!
Jack will be milking her by hand in the goat barn until her foot is better. We are going to (hopefully) use a fomentation with the comfrey tea and wrap it with a bandage to hold it in place to help with healing. I'll let you know how that goes.
I think dinner will be late tonight.
Nancy

In Case You're Wondering

Cayenne pepper really does stop bleeding. (They used to use it for that purpose in wars.) We bought a young Alpine buck a while back that was pretty wild because he hadn't been handled. He had been disbudded but decided to grow horns at just under a year old. One day he caught one of them in some fencing and broke it off. It was bleeding badly. Jack came to the back door calling for help and told me what had happened. I knew about cayenne so I grabbed some from the kitchen and ran it outside. Jack was elected to be the one that applied the cayenne to the badly bleeding horn site. While cayenne may burn at first, it then deadens pain. (You'll see it in arthritis rubs and such.) It was the burning part that concerned us. (Especially Jack). He went in and after much crashing around in the barn, he emerged unharmed. (Jack, not the goat.) Now that the coast was cleared, I went in and saw that the bleeding had slowed to a small trickle, then clotted and stopped completely. What a wonderful thing.
Hope your daily adventures turn out well.
Nancy