Olive (sheep). Arrived 6 February 2013
A few months ago a cancerous growth on Olive’s nose ruptured. Despite efforts to treat the wound, the infection continued to worsen as her 13 year old body could no longer fight it. We tried our best to keep her as comfortable as possible,… but we could see her condition was affecting her quality of life – she was experiencing a lot of discomfort and starting to have trouble eating. With the guidance of our vet, we made the painful decision to end her suffering today (9 February 2017). RIP sweet girl <3
Olive (name after Olive Oyl, Popeye’s very slim girlfriend) arrived at Happy Hooves Farm Sanctuary with Patrick the sheep and Ellen DeHeiferis the cow, from a local pound.
Olive was very underweight and they were all fearful and extremely wary of humans, but none more than Olive. Over the first couple of months, we wormed her and provided her with good nutrition, but it seemed to take a lot for her to gain weight – really not gaining it as quickly as we expected. We found out why exactly, one day about two and a half months later when we came out to find she had given birth to a lamb… we had no idea she was pregnant, due to her lack of weight and condition!
Naturally we had to name this little guy Sweet Pea. His feeding from Olive needed supplementing for the first few days of his life as he was very weak – probably because of the malnutritioned state Olive had arrived in. However, it was great that we only had to supplement the feeding and not remove Sweet Pea from Olive to raise away from her. After just that few days of helping out with the feeds, Olive was able to raise lil’ Sweet Pea all by herself, as it should be with all sheep and their lambs.
They have been completely inseparable ever since, with Sweet Pea following his mum everywhere, even at the age of one year old and beyond.
Would you like to help us to take care of the resident animals? One off donations and sponsorship gifts are available now to support our work. Thank you for caring about farm animals.
** Happy Hooves Farm Sanctuary – Where The Good Life Begins **
