Its bound to happen between having a older barn, barb wire fencing, and just general life, the barn critters will get some cuts and scrapes, now I know that some folks just feel that they will heal on their own, and in most case’s that is true..
However the time of the year, the overall condition of the animal has a fair amount of effect on that, example, in fly season, you need to worry more about fly strike (maggots in wounds), or if a mother is nursing twins, and has dropped condition a bit because of the amount of milk she is producing, or if they are young, they are clearly going to not heal as fast as a adult with no stress’s is.
Now I am still not sure how Marty got this scrape, its oddly placed on his back, with no way for him to keep it clean, it does not look like a barbwire poke, nor could it be a bite from girl (which would be odd anyway, she tends to keep him in line with a push) and yet the height is all wrong for anything in their loose box stalls, so the best I have come up with, is that he did it on a tree in the pasture.. Boys will be Boys after all!
Now I have trimmed out the hair to allow open air flow around the scrapes, they were already starting to heal a bit with no real sign’s of a issue but as often is the case, looks do not tell the whole story, so I wanted to make sure I did a little care on them, I carefully soaked warm cloths on it till it soften, so that I could take the half healed scab’s off to make sure I could clean under them, and while one is smaller, the deeper bigger one on the right did in fact have green puss in it.
I flushed it with hydrogen peroxide and the truth came out on if it was infected or not.. and it took two more flushes before it stopped bubbling white.
then time to give it a dab of healing salve, which I will touch up twice a day at feeding time, and it should be healed up in a matter of days.. Now I’m not saying that his body would not have healed it, but why not give a helping hand and put our knowledge of germs to use.
Just another Day on the Farm 
Kinda looks like you have some Vegarian Vampires in your area with the dual bites, maybe from Vampire teeth?
Kidding and a very good post. I will be getting some more Peroxide today as well, cheers and thanks for posting this.
Vampire feeding on my calf beware, I feed garlic in the spring for worms.. so he won’t be back..
Hey Farmgal, I nominated you for the Versatile Blogger award! 🙂 And tell Marty to behave himself – green puss? Bleh!
Ah, Thanks Daisy!! That is so kind of you! and I don’t just like zombies, I love them as long as they are in books, movies or TV shows and not real, cuz that would suck! Will tell marty to behave!
Yup, that sure looks a lot better – everything just heals so much faster and cleaner with a little H2O2, eh? I love watching how it bubbles (and kinda takes your mind off the sting; )
Marty says a pan of milking ration and while my hide might have flinched a bit, I didn’t feel a thing!
I don’t have farm animals, but I AM amazed at how many people would take their pet to a vet for this kind of thing. Useful info for ALL animal lovers to be sure.
I’m all for taking your pets and having the vet come for you farm animals if its required, but for something as small as this, we would not run to the doctor, (I hope) and I would not consider calling the vet before I tried to deal with it myself.
Agreed. I think many people are afraid to try things themselves. Your site is a good reminder that there is much that we are capable of, and that practice leads to expertise.
Okay, this is funny considering what I’ll be posting tonight. The only thing I want to say, though, is that I’ve recently learned that hydrogen peroxide doesn’t work the way we’ve always been taught it works. It’s not a disinfectant (or at least, plain water is just as good, even if water doesn’t do the cool foamy thing), and the bubbles aren’t caused by germs/infections! It’ll foam anytime there is a bit of blood or dead skin – and even on a cut potato. I thought it weird the first time I read it, but I’ve been seeing the same thing everywhere I turn. And at the hospital last night (more in my blog post), we were told no hydrogen peroxide!
Hi Doomer, I look forward to the post, I have used peroxyde for many years and seen some pretty amazing healing results from it, so while I will honestly try to keep a open mind, proof is in the pudding as they say.. if it didn’t work, then what why did the treatments work?
My Dad always used Tide powdered laundry detergent to clean open wounds on animals. Add enough water to make it into a thick paste and rub it into the wound. Rinse it out with water, lots of water. If it is a really bad wound, he would pack it into the wound and wrap it until the next day and clean it again until it heals. I have seen really bad wounds heal without scarring and the hair would grow back and look as good as new.
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