Baking Soda for Ruminant Bloat, or How My Ram Cheats Death

Reader Contribution by Tina Elliott
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My first experience with bloat happened the very first morning that I had sheep. Actually it was the very first morning that I had a sheep, as in the first one we ever had here at the farm.

Nigel, our East Friesian dairy ram, was two months old when we brought him home. I wanted to start my own dairy sheep herd, and I was lucky enough to find this ram only a couple of hours away. He was our first sheep, and I suppose he is fortunate to have survived this long with that dubious distinction.

After we brought him home, we put him in the barn, which was wide open and had no stalls. We installed some temporary chicken wire as Nigel’s stall, and felt okay about it as we left for the evening. He was just a little baby sheep, surely he would be fine until morning.

When I went out to check on the little guy the next morning, I found him lying down and severely bloated. He had smashed through the chicken wire (a bit of foreshadowing here regarding his behavior), and had gotten into the bag of sheep feed, that we of course had not locked up because we thought he was secure. The lesson we learned at this point; NEVER leave any food out, no matter how secure you think your animals are.

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