When I woke up this morning and looked out the kitchen window, something immediately caught my eye. The llama standing oddly, with a white lump somewhat underneath her. Sheep down! Sheep down! I hustled into some clothes and went down to check.
It was #KRK33, one of my favorite triplet-bearers. She was on her back, with her legs feebly paddling in the air like she was about to expire. I rolled her upright and she struggled to stand, staggered, then fell again. I inspected her, nothing seemed really amiss. She had a small fresh bloody scab on her hock- nothing drastic, but recent. Bronte!
I had noticed last night that Bronte had managed to ditch her drag chain, and had made a mental note to go find it in the daylight. It helps curtail her running and sheep hassling.
What I think happened was Bronte singled #33 out, was hassling her, and 33 fell down. Into a small swale. And got stuck there. Sheep are remarkably helpless when they get stuck on their sides or backs. Despite having birthed triplets and nursed twins this year, #33 is already pretty rotund from lush summer grasses, so she’s not exactly agile.
What’s interesting is Loyal Llama, how she knew #33 was in trouble, and stayed with her. This sense of protectiveness is not something sheep have for their peers, it’s almost elephant-like. Last night when I went to feed dogs, I saw the llama’s shadow there in the dark, in that same spot. I was tired, it was cold. Instinct told me to go check on the sheep. I walked to the end of the pasture where they had bedded down, everything seemed fine. There are too many to count, so it’s not obvious if one is missing from the group. It was a little odd that the llama wasn’t with them, but from a distance, it looked like she was grazing, so I dismissed it. Now I wonder if #33 was stuck there last night, and the llama’s head was down because she was sort of “lowing over” her friend. Note to self: take llama more seriously the the future.
While I worked on helping #33, the llama fended off the curious dogs with venomous anger. I helped #33 lay upright, and massaged her all over to get her blood flowing again and assess the state of her rumen. A sheep being stuck on their back or side for very long is bad news, it’ll trigger bloat. In a few minutes, she was feeling better, and struggled to her feet. She still needed to lean against me for several minutes to regain her balance- I wonder if her legs were literally “asleep” from poor circulation? She urinated for a long time, including on me. 
Her urine smelled strangely, maybe concentrated from so long collecting up.
Finally #33 was able to navigate again. Typical old crotchety lady, she stamped off to rejoin the herd, seemingly miffed at the whole ordeal. The llama stuck carefully close. The dogs were leering, so I took them to the second pasture to lock them up for the day and give #33 a break from any further annoyances.
As a precaution against gassy bloat, I syringe-fed her a cup of water with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, baking soda and Pepto Bismol mixed in. Then topped it off with some squirts of Nutridrench, to give her some energy after not having eaten. Her rumen didn’t look distended, and when I massaged it with my fist, it was soft and doughy, so I suspect she’ll be fine. I encouraged her to walk quite a bit, to help relieve any gas buildup.
When she stood up and started walking again, the llama did the most charming thing. With me, her behavior is usually brutish, either bashing into me to get away, or shoving her head forcibly into feed buckets. If she spoke English, I think the only words she’d use with me are gimme and get 
away. But at this moment, she seemed to clearly observe that I had helped her peer. She leaned right into my face and nearly kissed me, with her ears forward and making direct eye contact, in a rare friendly gesture. I imagine she was thinking, human, maybe you’re alright after all.
Despite her usual twitty behavior, I have to credit her this one. I may not have noticed #33 was really down, and not just lying down, if the llama hadn’t been lording over her, and had I not remembered that’s exactly where the llama was last night. That ewe is likely pregnant with triplets, so that was a $800 save! Nice job, Loyal Llama!
The Collie Farm Blog 
November 21, 2010 at 8:24 am
You know what would be a neat product, a cheap RFID based tracking system to watch the herd. You could set it up so it is tracking the pasture and after a few calibrations runs you could have it track to see if an animal is too long in one spot and then automatically text you with a message. You could tier it to send emergencies to the phone and just general statistics to log herd motion to a computer. You could probably even get it to realize when the herd is being harassed by Bronte and then even set it up to send her a command directly to her collar to knock it off! Of course you would want to make sure that function is turned off when you are working the herd with the other dogs… 🙂
November 21, 2010 at 4:15 pm
Travelingserviceman, that is a really good idea and I would imagine would be a viable product people would pay for! Given that the LGDs cost quite a bit in overhead and are an imperfect guard since they sometimes do naughty things, a technology solution would be a lot better. If it had a temperature sensor, that would be even cooler- you’d know when a sheep’s temp was elevated due to unseen infection, and when it drops for labor!
Someone only needs to patent and productize it!
Michelle
November 21, 2010 at 8:22 pm
Why don’t you send it to EECS and AG/SCI as a cross curriculum project for next year and use your herd as a guinea pig? Bend Hagemeister’s ear to see if he would be interested in heading it up (just look what he did with paint.net). It would be a neat project especially if it ended up open-source. I’m envisioning RFIDs on every sheep and Arduino’s on every fence post. If you had a temp sensor, it would probably end up costing more because each sensor on the sheep is then active (requires a battery), I bet you could bring the statistics department in and they could statistically determine a sick sheep just based on past behaviour. Then you could just use dime a dozen RFIDs as the sheep sensors. I’m not patenting it, so go for it, try to keep it open-source, though :).
November 21, 2010 at 8:25 pm
P.S. I was in traveling in China last week, did you know that your blog is blocked in China by The Great Firewall? You’re so subversive! 😀
November 21, 2010 at 8:56 pm
I don’t know if I have the energy for students this year, but maybe in the future. It would be a lot of fun. I’d love to know how many times a day they traverse the pasture- it seems like a lot. When they aren’t in rotation, they really spend all day walking back and forth, looking for the best tendrils.
How funny that I am blocked in China- I searched for the keyword, and I do mention once the ol’ “made in China” stereotype. I guess that’s enough! 😀
Michelle
November 22, 2010 at 2:28 am
Temperature sensing may not require a battery. A quick Google for RFID+temperature+sensor turns up a lot of links.
The way RFID works is that the reader blasts out a radio signal that the RFID chip receives on its antenna. The receiver uses the RF power captured by its antenna to transmit back a signal of its own – usually a serial number.
At least that’s my understanding.
Temperature sensing doesn’t require much in the way of watts, so it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch for an RFID device to transmit a serial number as well as the temperature.
November 22, 2010 at 3:27 am
I don’t know much about these myself, but I think I remember hearing about some technology that leveraged body heat to give an implanted device a little more power. I wonder if it would work?
Michelel
November 22, 2010 at 10:13 am
Jomegat is right about the way RFID works and with the system you would probably have more than enough power just from the radio query. The problem I see is how do you normally measure the sheeps temperature? I mean I think I have an idea how and it would be rather impractical/uncomfortable situate the RFID device there. And with external weather fluctuations I am not sure that you would have the granularity to actually see if their temperature is high or low due to external conditions. Regardless, leave the temperature for v2.0.
Here is something that looks interesting:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F5462925%2F5470493%2F05470538.pdf%3Farnumber%3D5470538&authDecision=-203
With the right statistics, you could then get a herd normal and then based on how they act see when one is not in the group, when they are all on the run due to Bronte or a coyote, when an individual starts acting abnormally, etc, etc.
Here is actually something that looks like it would be exactly what would be needed:
http://www.rfid-radar.com/introduc.html
A little military oriented, but that’s the South Africans for you. The player tracker one from above seems more ideal since it isn’t a commercial project like the second one.
It would be a neat project and I’m sure you could then sell it to other small herders. You could track the chickens as well :D. No more broody hens as the software would see when they are roosting away from where they should be at night.
The possibilities are endless!
November 22, 2010 at 9:40 pm
I also saw Bronte chasing and nipping on one of the brown/white sheep with horns on Friday morning. I honked my horn, but this did not sway Bronte from her mission. 30 minutes later drove back by and the sheep was laying down in the pasture, alone, while the herd was on the other side of the pasture.
November 23, 2010 at 3:24 am
Amanda, interesting- that’s the Jacob sheep, and she’s mean, I’m surprised she didn’t clock Bronte with her four devil horns of madness! I’ll have to double check her, though she has been acting fine when I’m down there. She has wool, too, which always protects them more from gripping. I think that some of the sheep have figured out that if Bronte starts bugging them, if they lay down and ignore her, there are no legs to grab, and the fun goes away. The llama tends to get the worst of it, as she tries to fight back, which only eggs Bronte on. Bronte was doing so well the last few months, this seems to be new, maybe since she’s been in this pasture with Moses. I may step it up and tie more “objects” to her, and maybe even switch to a cage-style muzzle (that still enables drinking) to make it physically impossible to be naughty. Or go back to excluding her outside of hotwire.
Michelle
January 2, 2011 at 7:28 pm
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