Burst eye – unpleasant but doesn’t look too bad!

While we were getting ready to dip the sheep, we noticed that one of the gimmers had a problem with her eye – it looked like it had burst! As you may know, I’m not really squeamish when it comes to animals, but I draw the line with eyes! Something about them that freak me out when something goes wrong. Anyway, we dipped the sheep but didn’t dunk her head under like we do with the rest. We penned her with 2-3 others just so she’d be easy to catch later and I phoned the vet. Here is the sheep as she was first

As you can see, it’s pretty intense! The vet couldn’t come until after 5 so we had to wait. When he came, he said that the eye was actually in the process of healing and that it had indeed burst. As soon as we had her, he held up the cornea, that had been hanging loose. He cleaned the eye up as best he could and gave her anti-biotics. I have to give her a second jab on Thursday. This is how we left her. The blue spray is anti-septic stuff the vet applied.

Not sure what caused it, possibly a bit of fence or something. We had them gathered last Saturday and didn’t notice anything when drenching her but the Hector, the vet, said that it would only have been a slight bulge then so wouldn’t be really noticeable. The sheep is fine, behind my parents house and will be ok to go to the ram at the end of next month.