Dawn's fawn

This is Donna. The one on the lap, not the one sitting on the bale. With her long brown ears and the way she sleeps she looks like a little deer. She's one of the twins born to Border Leicester Dawn who had a difficult arrival. Since then they haven't looked back except for this week, when she was found limping about, wagging her front hoof for sympathy.

She has an abscess between her cloves. Which would certainly hurt in any type of foot, let alone one with hard little hooves that don't really want to be parted by such a swelling.

So it's first aid time. With a bit of reassurance from her mother Donna pretends to be brave whilst we give her an antibiotic shot and put a poultice on her foot. Every day for five days.

She managed to take off the first poultice bandage which was found nestling in the straw like a lost pixie boot, complete and intact except for the lamb foot that should have been inside it. We then learned to use self-adhesive horse exercise bandage to cover the bandage covering the poultice and all of it covering her foot. This stayed on. She wasn't sure if it was her colour...

but in a few days the abscess had burst and she putting full weight on her sore paw and running about with the best of them.