And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Matthew25:33 The sequel to My Memories Of Animals Large and Small is now on the market. The title of the paperback book is Sheep On The Right Goats On The Left. The book is in kindle and nook ebooks, too. In this book is more stories about the animals I took care of from the 1990s until recently. Some are humorous. Others were cause for worry like when for months something was making a banging noise in the barn. Still others are sad like when my favorite sheepdog, a Border Collie named Brandy, died. Here is an example of what is in this book. Chapter 13 Hogs In those days when we wanted to buy livestock, we liked going to the salebarns in Belle Plaine and Tama. On one of those visits to a salebarn, Harold decided to buy two sows which were going to farrow soon. That was my first time taking care of sows. They were in the middle room of the barn. Harold put a wooden gate in the opening and opened the roll door so they had fresh air. He decided to put a shelf on the wall and set a radio on the shelf so the sows had music to keep them calm. I wasn't sure why he did that until later. We found a radio works to keep female rabbits calm, too. The radio is a distraction from other noises. One of the sows had her pigs just fine. I climbed over the gate and put another wooden gate up to make a small wedge-shaped pen for a space for the sow who was soon to have her pigs so I could keep them apart. In a day or two, I was doing chores and found the sow had delivered a good size litter of pigs, but she didn't like them. When they wanted to nurse, the sow barked roughly at them to leave her alone and moved away from them. I thought maybe she was hungry and was waiting for me to feed her. Maybe she'd settle down after she ate. I climbed up the gate and started to climb down the other side with the feed. The sow bark loudly and gave an angry squeal. I looked over my shoulder. Oh yeah, that was an angry squeal all right. She was coming at me. Her slobbering mouth gaped open with large teeth bared as she raced at me like she meant to do me in. I didn't hesitate to scramble back over the gate and set the pail down. When I wheeled around, the sow was biting at the wooden gate, taking out on it her regret that she didn't get there quickly enough to nail me. I tried to go back to breathing normally as I backed up, thinking that gate wasn't strong enough to stand her abusive bites. I might have to make a fast getaway out of the barnyard. We moved the sows to the east side of the barn with their pigs where they had more room. It was clear something was wrong with the sow, and her pigs weren't going to live long if she didn't settle down. The pigs already had the long narrow look from being hungry. They were squealing loudly since their mother ran at me. The sow might take out her irritation on her noisy little pigs next while they pestered her, wanting to nurse. This was the problem that brought on my first call to a vet. Usually, I considered calling a vet Harold's job but he was at work. Turned out this was one of those tasks that stopped being fifty-fifty when animals were sick, and I was the only one home. The local vet was well known and had practiced around the community for years. In this area at the time, cattle and pigs were the main livestock. So I found myself beside the tall, broad-shouldered vet looking in at the upset sow, still growling at her pigs. I explained the problem. He listened quietly. I took it this vet was a man of few words, or he just didn't have many women customers. The vet asked me how long we'd had the sows. I told him not long at all. He said sometimes moving the sows just before they were going to farrow upsets them. This sow had a psychological problem from being moved to a strange place. I wasn't too convinced the sow had a mental problem. I wanted to ask the vet if I needed a psychiatrist for the sow, but he didn't look like he had a sense of humor. I had to take into consideration that he had been treating animals for years. He diffidently knew more than I ever would about animal health. I did point out that Harold had turned the radio on for the sows to help calm them. Later as I thought back about the vet's assessment, I recalled how upset Duffy, our first goat, was at being moved from her former home and all her friends when she was so close to giving birth. At the moment, I really didn't have time to give anything much thought except that sow was going to take me out if I tried to feed her, and she'd starve her pigs or harm them if something couldn't be done to help her soon. The vet eased close enough to the sow to give her a shot, but he didn't say what the medicine was, and I didn't have the nerve to ask what he gave the sow. He said she'd probably quiet down shortly from the shot which did sound encouraging to me. In an hour, I stayed hidden along the barn wall when I slipped up to check the sow. She finally had laid down and her pigs were nursing as the sow grunted to them. I was so relieved. Not only for the sow and pigs, but this meant I didn't have to worry about getting in her pen to feed her. My memory on many facts is rather vague sometimes, but I can tell you exactly what day I had the vet come to care for the sow. It was August 16, 1977, the day Elvis Presley died. I know this because the radio announcer broke in on the music with the bulletin while the vet and I were talking. I did some computer research on farrowing sows and found symptoms like this sow had does sometimes happened. I told Harold before the sows farrowed again I wanted somewhere to put some farrowing crates to get the two sows we had contained so I could give shots safely, and the sow couldn't get at the pigs or me if she was in a bad frame of mind. Maybe next time, the vet would tell me what I needed to give the sows if I asked for the medicine to give the shots myself. I learned long ago I should be careful what I ask Harold for. That was all the incentive he needed to have a hog house built and brought in. Once the building was in place Harold put in fourteen farrowing crates he bought from someone. “This is an awful big hog house. We only have two sows,” I reminded him. Harold had a fix for that problem. He bought twelve more sows and a boar. Soon I found myself in charge of a fourteen sow farrowing house. How did that happen so fast I wondered. Anyway, everything worked well at birthing time just like I thought it would with the sows crated. The sows went in easily enough for the feed in the front of the crates. Once they were safely contained, I kept a close watch on them, because I just when they should give birth. By farrowing time, I had talked to the vet. He sold me bottles of medicines to keep on hand for the sows which made me happy. I gave shots to the sows which kept them from getting feverish and injections to let down their milk. Plus, I had goat milk to feed the extra pigs or pigs that needed to be fed before their mothers had milk. I did need the goat milk. I kept count of the number in the litter as the pigs were born, and when the sows had more pigs than they could feed, I made sure the runt pigs over the sow's dinner plate limit had their colostrum and took them in the house. In fact, I always liked the idea that the sows had a big litter. It wasn't any harder work saving newborn pigs than it was any other newborn animal. I got a high-sided cardboard box to put the pigs in. At first, when the two or three pigs squealed in the middle of the night that they were hungry I got up and fed them. I was using a couple of Duane's baby juice bottles. Those bottles got a lot of use over the years for other animals. Eventually waking up for feeding times grew as tiresome as making the trips to the barn during lambing. I soon decided I had to come up with a better method for feeding the pigs so I didn't have to get up in the night. I took some denim strips from old blue jean legs and tied them around the bottles and tied the bottles onto the handle of the cookstove's oven door so the bottles hung down in the box. In the night, I'd wake up just enough to hear the pigs grunt and squeal that they were hungry, and then came the sucking noises. Pigs are smart. They caught on right away to where the bottles were. Except for one night when I had three pigs instead of two in the box and only two baby bottles. I found out pigs don't like to take turns drinking. They all want their share at the same time. The racket was loud as two of the pigs squealed and scuffled over the same bottle. By the time they swung the bottle back and forth a number of times taking it away from each other, the bottle dripped dry, and they didn't get to drink the milk. The pigs kept squealing that they were hungry. I didn't get up to see about them, thinking they would live until morning. Surely soon they would give up and go to sleep. Remember I said pigs are smart. One of the little fellows decided he had enough of me ignoring him. He was hungry, and he intended to do something about it. He scaled the box side, fell over the top, and came through the kitchen, the living room, and into the bedroom squealing all the way as he trailed me like an experience bloodhound. He circled the bed, keeping up his war-hoops. I was pretty sure he'd soon be scaling up the covers after me if I didn't get up. Harold mumbled, “Someone is paging you.” I figured I had no choice but to get out of bed and take the pig back to his box. Since the other pig had emptied the remaining bottle, I warm enough milk for my little bloodhound, and the other hungry pig each their own bottle. It wasn't long after that I determined those three pigs were old enough to wait until morning to nurse. Besides, it was a warm time of year. The pigs could survive in the barn. I put the pigs in a lambing pen way way way out in the barn where I didn't have to listen to their complaints in the night. I figured the pig who hurled over the box wouldn't be able to scale the lambing pen wall. By then the older vet had retired, and another vet was in the office. I went to the vet's office for medicine. While he was getting what I asked for, I told him about how smart the pig was to find me in the middle of the night for his bottle. He had his back to me, mixing up the medicine for me. He turned to me and said seriously, “Maybe you should have knocked that pig in the head.” I gave him a hard, no way would I do that look. He grinned. He'd been joking to get a reaction from me, but I'm sure that sort of thing happened in farrowing houses when the sows had more pigs than they could feed. It just didn't happen in our farrowing house. This vet reminded me of what the retired vet had said to me one day. I wondered if my reaction to treating my animals had been passed from the one vet to the other. One time the older vet was still in the office when I went in to get medicine for a ewe. I explained the ewe was sick. He asked me all the right questions. How old was she? How long had she been ailing, and what were her symptoms? I told him she had pneumonia and tried to sound confident. Of course, I was new at diagnosing animals, but I'd looked in the book I bought and that seemed to be the diagnoses that went along with the symptoms. The vet took my word for it and gave me a bottle with three doses of antibiotic in it and instructed me about how to use the medicine. He gave me his classic serious look as he said, “You know some people say a sick sheep is a dead sheep.” I wondered if that was the reason he took my word for the diagnosis and felt a little irked at him. If I was wrong about what was ailing the ewe, according to sheep health lore, she was a goner anyway. I didn't want to hear the old wives' tale some people said. I curtly informed the vet not one of my sheep were going to die if I could help it. I saved the ewe, and now I had the name of the antibiotic on the bottle so I could order next time from a mail-order catalog. Some time back I started ordering from the computer. That is what I've been doing ever since. If I do come across an ailment I don't know, I call a vet. The vet comes, diagnoses for me, and gives me the medicine I need. From then on, I recognize the ailment symptoms and keep the medicine on hand to use for that ailment. The bottom shelf in my refrigerator door has always been the place to store animal meds. Of course, I did have a vet curious when he told me the medicine he'd try on a lamb. I said I had already tried that and it didn't work. He asked me where I got my medicine so I said from a mail-order catalog. Maybe he thought he wasn't the first vet I'd called about the lamb. I named all the different medicines I had tried on this particular lamb and nothing seemed to work. The vet grinned at me. He said I used a cure or kill method. He might have been right, but usually, I succeeded with a cure for the patient even if I wasn't sure which medicine worked. This vet was the one who told me I should throw away my mail-order catalog. I was losing him money by not coming to him. He smiled as he said that, but he was right. While I was promoting for the sheep industry, the literary group in town decided to have me show them how to spin wool. The meeting just happened to be at the house of the elderly vet. He wasn't home that night. He was probably waiting for all the women to leave his house before he came back home. The women at the meeting seemed interested and asked questions about spinning and caring for sheep. The vet's wife smiled at me and said, “Before Doc left, he said to tell you he still thinks a sick sheep is a dead sheep.” I smiled. Doc had remembered our conversation from several years before. I must have made an impression on him. My reply to his wife was, “Tell him I still disagree with him when I'm the one taking care of my sheep.” I was wrong about one thing. Doc did have a sense of humor. He got in one last zinger through his wife. He didn't want to be there to face me himself. Paperback books can be found online at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Ebooks are at Barnes and Noble for Nook and Amazon for Kindle. Also, Smashwords.com has my ebooks. For paperback https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sheep-on-the-right-goats-on-the-left-fay-risner/1139647974?ean=9781666297935 Kindle https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Sheep+On+The+Right+Goats+On+The+Left+by+Fay+Risner&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss Nook https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sheep-on-the-right-goats-on-the-left-fay-risner/1139647974?ean=2940162227724