I have a friend that’s a sheep farmer, and this bit is what surprised me most the first time she showed me around the farm. Her sheep graze in the mountains as long as there isn’t snow, so they’re probably in decent shape compared to sheep a lot of other places. STILL, she said she would find sheep every now and then that had lain down wrong, tipped over, and were unable to get up. They would literally die if she didn’t find them and right them up.
Apparently, it’s something about how their organs move around, which makes them all slide over to the side if the sheep lies on its side. Once that happens, their center of mass is shifted too far over, and they’ll fall over again when they try to get up. The way to fix them was to roll them over on their belly and keep them there until their organs had slid back into place…
I have a friend that’s a sheep farmer, and this bit is what surprised me most the first time she showed me around the farm. Her sheep graze in the mountains as long as there isn’t snow, so they’re probably in decent shape compared to sheep a lot of other places. STILL, she said she would find sheep every now and then that had lain down wrong, tipped over, and were unable to get up. They would literally die if she didn’t find them and right them up.
Apparently, it’s something about how their organs move around, which makes them all slide over to the side if the sheep lies on its side. Once that happens, their center of mass is shifted too far over, and they’ll fall over again when they try to get up. The way to fix them was to roll them over on their belly and keep them there until their organs had slid back into place…