Yesterday I spend most of my time on tenterhooks. I thought I would wait 24hours to see if Izzy and Thomas improved. Knowing how I feel when my stomach is rebelling against the rest of my body, I thought it would be good to just watch and wait.

Several times I went into the paddock and walked Thomas and Izzy around the pen. Really this was just slowly walking behind them to get their  systems active and to get them to poop. It is really amazing how much of animal management is based upon animal poop. I am consistently watching poop consistency, colour, smell, frequency, and viscosity. Yes it seems kind of gross, but when they can’t talk you have to look for other ways of figuring out how they are feeling.

So I watched to see how the bowels of both Izzy and Thomas were reacting to their overeating experience. Thomas took longer to show signs of recovery than Izzy.

Izzy went from diarrhea, to producing healthy looking cow poop, to what could have been mistaken for soft-serve ice-cream that had a definite sound when they hit the ground.

Thomas only started to improve later on in the day. I was very happy when he finally started firming up and his back end no longer behaved like a hose squirting thick, muddy water. I was very close to calling Dr. Rob back to entubate Thomas again.

By the end of the day, both were a bit more interested in eating. They mouthed and nibbled on a bit of hay. This was encouraging.

Today I will be watching again. If they don’t eat then Dr. Rob will be coming back, but I am really hoping they will eat.

The lambs and Itchy are so sick of being in the pen. They will get to go out to the paddock for a little bit this afternoon.

Wish us luck!