Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Shepherd's Purse

I was asked by someone to explain a little on Shepherd's purse, why we keep it on hand and how we use it. So, here ya' go!

Shepherd's Purse is an herb used to stop internal bleeding. It grows all over North America but is often overlooked. The tincture can be purchased online at Lucky Vitamin.

We have used it a few times over the years in our livestock.

The most obvious life saving one was when this Boer doe had ringwomb (when their cervix does not dialate naturally and it has to be manually dialated). We had been manually dialating her for a good 1 1/2 to 2 hours. We made progress enough and she felt the urge to push the kid out. So the kid came out, but since she still was very tight up in there, her cervix tore. She started hemorrhaging very badly. Her gums and eyelids began to go white. I immediately ran for the Shepherd's Purse tincture, and gave her a good couple dropfulls. The hemorrhaging stopped, and within a few minutes she was alert enough to start licking her kid.

We've used it for smaller hemorrhages throughout the years, and it has always worked. Needless to say, given the choice, I will never be without this herb.

Suriyah

2 comments:

Brenda said...

Suriyah - Thank you for posting on this. I'm kidding 62 does this season ... 18 of the does will be yearling first fresheners. I feel better knowing about how you used the Shepherd's Purse tincture. I want to be as prepared as I can during kidding season!

charlotte's menagerie said...

Interesting. I will get some of this before I bred my girls.