Robin McKinley

b_twin_1 wrote on Tue, 28 October 2008 00:13

Well you would be insulted too if you went to slurp your drink and it hit your stomach with a cold thwack. When lambs suckle the milk is diverted away from the rumen to go directly into the proper first stomach (and I'm too lazy to get the book out to remind which one it is called!). So it can be a nasty shock - and give them a stomach ache - to suckle cold water or milk (please don't tell me it was fridge-cold water...). They will drink of their own accord out of water troughs etc. If they had got the lamb onto warm water instead of milk then they could just stop feeding it. Give it pellets and hay instead (presuming of course that it is around 12 weeks old...) I've got three lambs on the go at the moment.

Oh, he was eating grass just fine at that point. He didn't need feeding; he just didn't want to give up his warm drink. (I'm not blaming him, quite frankly. I like my warm drinks, too.) How do ewes usually deal with the weaning process? Or do they just put up with it until the lambs get bored?

So... how are the three babies going? Do we get more pictures? *grins*

PS: I don't think it was fridge-cold water. They've lived long enough on that farm to bring up four kids and then some, so I figure they know what they're doing.

[Updated on: Tue, 28 October 2008 19:30]

Susan in Melbourne wrote on Tue, 28 October 2008 19:52

Mankind likes to think that he rules the world - those of us with pets know better. We had a life or death situation with feeding our cat, Hector, when he was an adolescent. He developed crystals in his urine, and thus a blocked uretha, necessitating endless visits to the vet. There was no real explanation for what causes it, and the only long-term treatment was to put him on a special diet food, only obtainable at great expense from the vet. Now, Hector was a meat man. Dried food? Pfft! Tinned food? Pfft? Dried or tinned mixed with liver? Pfft! We found ourselves in the untennable situation of having to say that we just cannot afford to keep paying hundreds of dollars to the vet for emergency treatment, so he was literally going to have to learn to eat this food or it would be all over. A monumental battle of wills followed. Hector: (with pitiful look) But I don't LIKE it! Me: Tough Hector: I won't eat it. Me: Starve then! He got thinner and thinner, and we were in daily fear of being arrested by the RSPCA, but the vet kept saying that no cat will starve itself to death, and he was right. Hector eventually cracked, and started to eat a bit more at each meal, and now five years later is a good trencherman who tucks in with gusto twice a day. What a relief! He totally ruined one summer and cost hundreds of dollars, but it was worth the trauma in the end.

I don't understand why male domestic cats have this problem so often! My parents lost a cat early in their marriage because the treatments back then were not as effective as they are now, but it left a big mark on them. They compare every cat to Pippin, who only lived to 6 months.
My cat George started having trouble 2 years ago when he was diagnosed with FLUTD. Amytriptilin (sp?) cleared up his UTI immediately and he started getting canned food, as well as a fancy new water dome to make sure he got enough water. That managed it fairly well until just this year when I was scooping out the litter box and found a substance that looked like sugar! The vet identified it as crystals in his urine and put him on the Urinary S/O diet. Royal Canin is nice enough to offer the formula in dry, canned, and pouch, the latter of which is like little cutlets in gravy, which George LOVES, and it is doing wonders for his urinary health. But then, George has never been a picky eater, probably because he was a stray for so long and beggars can't be choosers.
My parents' cat, now, will cry and cry for kibble when presented with wet food. He's totally addicted to kibble, which makes it difficult to mix any sort of medicine into his food.

[Updated on: Wed, 29 October 2008 08:13]

Perhaps if your parents tried sprinkling a little of the kibble on top of the wet food? That's how Sassi likes it. But then knowing cats, he might just eat the kibble and leave the rest!

[Updated on: Wed, 29 October 2008 08:59]

AJLR wrote on Tue, 28 October 2008 18:08

I wonder if the 'need someone else eating nearby' element is something to do with pack behaviour?

a lot of it seems to be about competition spurring appetite; and many new puppies are reluctant to eat after leaving the litter where meals were usually a race to get the bottom of their bowl before a faster eating sibling finished and came over to "share"
some dogs don't like being left and manage to "train" their owners to "stay - good person - stay!" while they eat...
and one of my dogs has her own little food ritual, where she won't eat out of a bowl, but has to have 1/3 or 1/2 of her food tipped onto the floor, and the rest given when she's finished the first portion. Sigh. She's 10 or 11 now, a shaggy rescue so I forgive her, but it is very odd! Then she'll go and scarf up oddments left in other bowls if it was a meal she particularly enjoyed (compliments to the chef) so it's not as if she's scared of bowls.

AJLR wrote on Tue, 28 October 2008 18:08

I hope her new computer lets her come back and join in soon...

Yay! New computer up and running - sort of, so allowing for odd hiccoughs, I'll be back to as normal as it gets

[Updated on: Thu, 30 October 2008 05:17]