If the ewe with the broken leg HAD actually been in labor, then my decision to wait and let the lambs get born would have been correct. The only exception would have been had I noticed any bone protruding through the skin; that would have constituted a life-threatening emergency and would have warranted an emergency visit. Since there was no break in the skin and the ewe decided to not have lambs right away, everything was good and he put a walking cast on her leg.
We slowly caught up the ewe, laid her down on her side, and hobbled her by tying her one good front leg to her two back legs. I rested my knee on her neck and kept her calm and still.
What he did first was to clip her dewclaw and put a cotton stocking over the hoof and pull it all the way to the shoulder. Next, he wrapped soft fluffy gauze around the entire leg, putting lots of extra gauze up closer to the armpit. Even though the break was below the knee, he wanted to put the whole leg in a cast. Then he set the leg by pulling it straight and he quickly wrapped the plaster bandage around and around until he ran out of time because the plaster had set. I was truly amazed at how calm the ewe was during this whole procedure. She trembled the whole time, didn't like the pain when he set the leg, but was otherwise still.
After the plaster set up firmly, he took a lightweight aluminum rod and bent it in half, forming a "U" at the bend. He placed the "U" over the hoof and trimmed the ends of the rod so that they didn't come any higher than the plaster. Then he wrapped medical bandage all around the leg, anchoring the rod to either side of the leg (he told me duct tape would actually have been better but vets are supposed to look like vets, not furnace repairmen). The important part about the rod is that the ewe will put her weight on the "U" of the rod rather than on her hoof, thus preventing the bone from having any pressure on it.
He helped set the ewe on her feet and slowly let her get used to this new white thing on her leg. In a couple of minutes she was walking around pretty well on it and I can see that she is already relieved to have that aluminum rod help share the weight of her big bulky self . She will need to wear the cast for 6 weeks, after which time the vet will come back to saw it off.
I hope that my sharing this info with you will help you if you're ever in a similar situation. Having seen this done, I now think I could do it myself (but we don't want a "next time" do we?). Plaster bandage is easily available and I'm sure I could come up with a substitute for the aluminum rod. Listmember Tracy Derx emailed me to relate that she had a ewe with a broken leg and she used PVC pipe cut in half to wrap around the leg, which is a great idea if plaster bandage isn't available.
For now, if she just has her babies without complications, I think she will be fine.
Carol Carol Elkins Critterhaven Estate Registered Barbados Blackbelly Hair Sheep (no shear, no dock, no fuss) Pueblo, Colorado http://www.critterhaven.biz T-shirts, mugs, caps, and more at the Barbados Blackbelly Online Store http://www.cafepress.com/blackbellysheep
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