Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Dear Onion: here she is sporting a shaved and sore looking neck and looking just a little tired! We are still awaiting the second test result we mentioned on Tuesday but in the meantime the vet 'drained' the lump in her neck yesterday. This involved making a small cut with a scalpel and squeezing out the contents. We won't go into too much detail (you might be eating whilst reading this) but basically the contents were pus. Pus is an unpleasant whitish/yellowish substance that is created when the body is fighting some kind of infection caused by nasty bacteria. Yuk!! Onion was so brave when this was being done although she did scream when the vet then washed out the resulting empty hole in her neck to make sure nothing nasty was left in there. We gave her some antibiotics and at our last check around midnight she was looking okay!
This morning however, it was obvious Onion was not at all well. Despite having had this lump for over a week now, she has been behaving normally and showing no signs of being unwell at all. Not so this morning!!! When we examined her we realised her neck and face were really swollen and it was certain she had a high temperature too! Out came our vets again to confirm that the problem was an 'edema': this is where fluid that normally travels round the body doing all sorts of useful things (transporting blood for one thing) gets 'stuck' in one place and so causes a swelling. The vet gave Onion some pain relief and assured us that as the antibiotics she is on start to work, the edema will reduce because the fluid will disappear back into her body. Why this swelling occurred is linked to the draining of her lump and the extra 'work' Onion's body is doing to make her feel better!!
By this evening things were a little better and we think she had just about forgiven us for all the needles and scalpels we keep sticking in her!!!
And whilst all this was going on the turkeys discovered the workshop roof (having discovered the barn roof three nights ago). They really do love to explore and the higher the better. As long as they don't end up on the roof of our polytunnel, we don't mind at all...