Today on the Homestead: A New Member/Unexpected Emergency (VIDEO)
As I was walking back from giving the goats their morning browse, I heard Andrew calling for me from near the house. There was something dangling from his hands...something alive. One of his brothers had found a kitten near our fenceline, and while she was super friendly, she was skin and bones, and there was clearly something wrong with her neck.
My initial assessment was that she had been bitten by a dog. We have plenty of them in the area, and if the Great Dane that sometimes gets loose and runs around on our property is any indication (we are not fans of that dog), not all of our neighbors are the best at controlling them.
I'm quickly learning that being a homesteader means being ready to do your best to handle any situation, so I grabbed some clean cloths, some warm water, gauze, honey, and my herbal healing salve (https://steemit.com/herbal/@slhomestead/how-to-make-a-skin-healing-salve-from-weeds-part-2-video ), and got ready to play the best vet I could. The kitten was incredibly calm and affectionate, winning my heart quickly. She allowed me to clean her poor little neck, remove clumps of matted hair, and then...discover that it wasn't a bite wound at all...
We'll update you tomorrow with how our treatment went! And be warned...the next video will probably be a little graphic for those sensitive to images of wounds. To heal any mental images of gross parasites, here's a cute picture of her...
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See you soon! Hoping the best for this sweet little cat, and if she pulls through, she's got a loving home with Simple Life Homestead, that's for sure. :) We've got a job opening for a spoiled barn cat, and she'd fit the bill nicely.
I am not a vet, nor do I claim to be one. We are a homestead, and we have to do a lot of our work on our own. We are merely sharing our story, not providing veterinary instruction. Thankfully, we both have experience with animals, and Andrew has medical experience under his belt as well. Please use sound judgement and discretion when treating your animals, and when in doubt, ask for help.
What unexpected circumstances have you encountered lately? What is your best animal acquisition story?
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Ah the memories of grossness. We lived in the Okovago Delta in Botswana for a couple of years around 1999-2002 and the dogs used to get these quite badly. My 12 year old self was the designated animal person and would have to sit and pop the worms out like pimples. My advice to you would be not to think too much about what you're doing and just get it over with when you take the plaster off. It's usually one per hole. Hoping I don't ever have to do that again :) Good luck! The cat will be fine, just keep an eye on her wounds and make sure she's eating ok. Also check the rest of her body for more bites. No cows milk while she's recovering as at can lead to diarrhea, but you probably already know that :)
Looking forward to seeing her progress!
Thanks for the tips! We're keeping a close eye on her and flushed out everything post-botfly removal, so she seems to be in good shape. Normal poops, no additional bites that I could see.
That...that is certainly a unique set of childhood memories, haha! All I know about the Okovango Delta I learned from BBC documentaries about the wildlife--you must have tons of stories!
Glad to hear it.
Lol, ya not as many animal encounters as you would think. We had a hippo come past the house one evening that had left massive prints in the sand and left us scratching our heads for a bit. One of the local people insisted it was a lion until my dad pulled out the footprint chart that had a built in ruler so you can measure footprints. That, and we saw it in the river across the floodplains :) We rang in the dreaded Y2K on those flood plains. ( Floodplains look like big lawns most of the year)
Other than that, had a crocodile bite a hole in the water feeder pipe to the water tank. And lots of snakes.
A python decimated our brood of chicks only to be caught and eaten himself by the guy who was keeping an eye on our house while we were away.
I have had personal experiences ( I seemed to always be the one who ran into snakes) with a Puff Adder at 3 am, a Cape Cobra and an Olive Grass Snake.
My dad also once saved a pangolin from some guys who had caught it for meat and he brought it home to show us. He then let it go in a safe place. In that country being caught with wildlife without a permit is worse than just about any crime except murder.
Lots of life experiences. I have a bit of a giggle when people are amazed at 'off-grid' living when we had been doing it before it was mainstream :D Solar panels and a generator. Home schooled on computers.
Looking forward to tomorrow's post to see how it goes for the kitten.
Me too! I am both really looking forward to setting her free from the nasty thing (and getting some more food in her belly)...but I'm really not relishing seeing the larva in its full, nasty glory, haha.
Oh no! I hope the kitty will be okay! We just finished nursing one back to health ourselves and we've done it many times in the past. All our animals are rescues :) If you need any help or have questions let us know, we've seen quite a lot
I hope so too. It's nice knowing that botflies aren't lethal, but they're...nasty, that's for sure, especially when you're not expecting it. All my cats have always been rescues, but this is the first one that's "found" us! We'll be keeping her close for the next few days to make sure she doesn't have anything else concerning. Have you found any typical problems when rescuing strays? Anything you watch for?
Almost all the strays we have ever rescued had fleas which is always a huge pain in the butt. And you can treat intestinal worms with any ivermectin horse paste. Safeguard is the cheapest at my tractor supply. I know a lot of people recommend DE but I have not seen it work in my experience. I would love to see someone with a positive fecal use it and then get the animal retested after using DE to see if it actually works but we haven't had the opportunity yet.
Believe it or not, I haven't found any fleas on her! We'll be taking her in to be spayed at some point, so she'll get a good looking-over then, too. Thanks for the tips!
that's pretty remarkable!
Oh my goodness how precious! Hope you can get the botfly out easily and hope she does well! I'll be following her progress!
I hope so too! I'm excited about getting the nasty thing out and letting her heal!
What's going on with people plagiarizing posts? This one, and another that I thought was one of papa peppers kids turned out to be stolen. I have to make sure I un -follow that one to. Those CREEPS!
(shrug) As a former middle school teacher who was always on the lookout for plagiarism, I think it's just a new twist on an old "classic." I think a lot of people may be trying to game the system here on Steemit since there's a possibility of getting paid. But! Thankfully, there's a lot of really cool, authentic people here too, and that makes the lame-o plagiarizers seem a lot smaller in the long run. I really appreciate you coming over here to see the real post, too!
My pleasure, and you're right about the long run.