NT-12

Do you like cartoons? Most children do as long as they’re not too scary. Here’s one they might stare at over and over again.

Do you like apples?

NT-12 did. She just couldn’t stand up to eat them without help anymore. Or drink, or swallow, or breathe.

1. Caseous Lymphadenitis with:
a-Nephritis, suppurative (abscesses), multifocal (embolic), bilateral
b-Internal abscesses in: abdominal wall, diaphragm, liver, internal iliac lymph nodes
c-Positive serology for C. pseudotuberculosis

Etiology: Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis

2. Stomatitis, locally extensive, necrotizing, with plant material. Probable traumatic (food) etiology
3. Low copper and vitamin E status
4. Sarcocystis spp. infestation, severe, incidental
5. Glomerulosclerosis, multifocal, chronic
6. Fungal culture pending
7. Scrapie results pending

Pathologist's notes state: "These sheep had multifocal health problems including caseous lymphadenitis, copper and vitamin E deficiency and severe Sarcocystis spp. infestation. Please consider reviewing the health and nutritional management of the flock to control/prevent these problems in other animals."

How’d ya like those apples?

Papa Billy

Papa can’t pose for you at the Pierce College Farm Walk. He won’t nibble your fingers or polish his horns on the trees. The secrets of why his dark, chocolatey color faded, his muscles weakened, and his legs failed were trucked away with him to his death. And if he can’t make more of him again, he’s of no use or value to them.

Lucy

Thible

Thible’s mother and sisters

Peanut Jr. and Dallas

Amelia

Charlie

They’re waiting for you. Not here, but where all perfect souls go.

Thomas

He was a big feet, big ears, nuzzling, wooly beast. Wheat Thins junkie, hug-bug, itch my cheeks, head-press you in the chest type of sheep.

Thomas can’t meet you at the Pierce College Farm Walk, poke around in your pockets for treats, or scratch his head on your hip. Hoisted, lowered, then trucked away for disposal. He can never tell you why he was ill or why he died. We can only tell you how Thomas spent the last night of his short life: alone in his pen, weak, inappetant, febrile, and struggling to breathe.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Save his flock, and a little part of Thomas may still be around to greet you.

The importance of being goal-oriented

Big-ticket wishlist item for Los Angeles Pierce College farm’s annual event, Farm Walk 2006: is it a new tin roof to keep these pregnant goats dry overnight,

or even a new tarp on the old roof over these pigs, now down to a few sq. ft. of dry space?

Nope. It’s another one of these:

It’s a water hose. On wheels. And it has a handle and it rolls itself up automagically! Best of all, it’s YPM™: you people’s money.