Lambing 2009
Little boys live in a scary world. Shrieking eagles can swoop from the sky and carry you away clutched in their thorny talons; howling coyotes can leap from the grass and drag you away clenched in their yellowed teeth.
But little boys are safe with mom. This ram lamb was the last born of the 2009 lambing season—truly a surprise—born 18 days after we took the rams away from the ewes 5 months ago.
Is he proof of immaculate conception or did his mother wantonly jump the fence to join the rams when she ovulated all those months ago. Who knows: art trumps science once again.
A cooling breeze came up in the hot afternoon. The day was easy, it felt like childhood, there was little to do. The sheep were on the shady side of the barn. I sat on a feeder among them; the day is won when I can sit with the sheep. Seated, I am no threat—not that I ever am—but sheep are cautious by nature. I watch the discovering lambs prance, their cloven hooves fascinate me.
I admit I was flattered when ewe lamb 105 stopped to look at me. Sheep are always sincere, they bless you, you feel special—I sing to them—we're not limited by words.
A Way In The Manger
We've kept the problem ewes in the barn to better watch them. A ewe with a problem is a ewe with a lamb not getting enough milk; the lamb hunches up with the back rounded because its stomach is drawn in on itself to preserve the lamb's energy and warmth. We bottle train some of these hunchy lambs to get them onto a lamb bar, a bucket of milk with nipples on it used to supplement the lamb or to completely feed a lamb refused by its mother. To provide more immediate sustenance, we insert a rubber tube down the throat into the lamb's stomach to place 2 oz. of milk, and we may do this several times a day until the lamb gets stronger.
Two more ewes lambed this afternoon; I had to pull a very large ewe lamb from old mother 94. Now that it's out, she is taking good care of her baby; she must be 10 years old, having lambed 8 times. By the calm, trusting demeanor she now has, I know she knows me and it feels good to help out.
Busy day, we're halfway there, 18 more days to go. Today, 15 ewes brought forth 19 lambs: 4 sets of twins and 11 singles of which 13 were ewe lambs and 6 were ram lambs.
Before I got to the barn this morning, a lamb died at birth. I found the mother on her side; she was cast: on a slight slope she lay, her back was lower than her legs, she couldn't get her feet on the ground to stand up and care for her baby. She had been there for awhile trying to right herself—windmilling her legs—judging by the marks of her struggle. The lamb was almost out but it was cold. The bad news is that had I gotten there 45 minutes earlier I could have stood her up and saved the lamb, but the good news is that had I gotten there 45 minutes later the ewe would have been dead too.
The lamb lost, the ewe lost and I lose. You can't be there all day, all night everyday; but still you hope to be there when needed. The ewe pawed at the lamb trying to make it get up; I put out feed in the barn and she ran into eat with the other ewes. I removed the body and went about my chores.
The Three Tenors Sing O Solo Mio
9 lambs were born today: 2 sets of twins and 5 singles; the births were evenly spaced throughout the day making it easier than yesterday with its simultaneous births. In addition to handling the new lambs and moms, the project of the day was to dock the tails of lambs born earlier and to move them outside to join the older lambs.
Then, after feeding grain to the mothers in the yard, I shot video of their lambs running as they uniquely do in the first weeks of life The lambs are discovering what their legs can do; and as a flock, 20-30 of them will run from one end of the yard to the other end, back and forth they'll go picking up more runners as other lambs join the fun, overlapping and turning into one another like starlings in flight; but the lambs only run when they can't be seen by their dams who ignore them while eating grain, their heads deep in the feeders devouring the whole oats I put out. When the ewe's away...those dour, but wise, old mothers must have their reasons to damper this lamb foolery.
Carrying on, the lambs can levitate; straight up they go with four legs jumping at once to land on all hooves; their nonplussed looks saying, "look what my legs just did," before they bound along up the hill after their mates.
I want to post my lambs-at-play video, but I'm still too busy in the barn for a day off to learn my editing software—sooner or later the ewes will give me a break. Pictured above are Placido, José and Luciano, the triplets born yesterday, who are doing well and singing loudly about it.
After a slow start lambing is well underway with 33 lambs on the ground at the end of the first week: 15 ewe lambs and 18 ram lambs, all weighing between 6 & 8 lb. at birth—good birth weights for my 125 lb. ewes—lambs that are slim enough to deliver easily but with a fat reserve sufficient to ensure their survival on the critical first days of life as they realize instinctively, but by trial and error, the goodness of mom and milk.
22 ewes have lambed so far; there have been 2 sets of triplets, 7 sets of twins and 13 singles.
Today finishes the day 3 of lambing; one would expect twenty lambs on the ground now, but we have one: ram lamb number 001 to be exact. We should be busy in the lambing barn; instead we wait. Most of the ewes are bagging up (showing udder development) and they are due, have been due, will be due...all twenty plus ten more will lamb tomorrow; I'm as sure of this today as I was sure of it yesterday.
The sheep are not worried so why should I be; they're laying around in the warm sun, ruminating on something pleasant—what I don't know—but each has a peaceful, lost-in-thought expression like my brother Kirk had when he sat across the kitchen table from me at breakfast, eating Shredded Wheat with milk and sugar, dreaming about the Indian lore he read on the cards from inside the Nabisco box.
With the weather this afternoon, I decided to take my Cannondale Synapse out for its maiden ride on the Heritage Trail. The tires needed air after not having ridden the bike there since October; the branches overhanging the trail are barren now, but the buds will redden and the leaves will burgeon green—like me, the trees are waiting.
"No one will be watching us, why don't we do it in the road..." The White Album.
I slowly approached, one hand carrying my D700 mounted with a Nikon 70-200 mm lens, a telephoto zoom to keep my distance if the ewe needed it, a lens that was long enough to get close-ups of the two from 15 feet away—stopping, taking photos, advancing, I came up—the other hand holding a bag of lambing supplies: ear tags, ear tag pliers and spray markers for identification, and a bottle of 7% iodine to disinfect and desiccate the lamb's umbilical cord.
With no fuss, the ewe let me pick up and ear tag her lamb, 001, then dip his navel in iodine. She and I were moving, not in slow motion but deliberately, if not with a tai chi chuan flow then in a slow dance of alternating leads: she then I, then she again—considerate we were of her lamb—our eyes avoided contact and the world was right for us at that moment of newness. I put the lamb down, rose and stepped back; I typed a self-addressed email on my Blackberry "258 001 r" and copied it to Dominique. Back at my iMac running XP I will copy and paste that data into my lambing records in Excel.
The afterbirth tells me that the ewe will not have another lamb—no twin here—if the sac protruding from her vagina were filled with clear (not bloody) amniotic fluid we would be expecting another lamb or two. The afterbirth will fall away from the ewe within the hour.
My last two kelpies, Miss and Shade, loved to eat afterbirth—good and tasty—they would sniff it out, a week old, buried in the barn's bedding and run like furtive-eyed Wall Street thieves (something this rich must be a no-no), the long gore hanging from their greedy mouths, to a safe spot where they could chomp down, eye the devil, and enjoy their meal. Poem hasn't learned of this barnyard delicacy yet; but she will, as a dog's sense of smell is 100 times more acute than our own: she can smell an AIG broker and his credit default swaps from a mile away.
We take a break from the cold while innoculating the ewes with CD/T vaccine. I go to my idling truck, the heater blasting, to warm my hands and get my camera while Dominique huddles in with the sheep protecting herself from the 35 MPH gusts of Monday with afternoon temperatures that fell into the low 20's.
Pink grease-marks on noses tell us which sheep have been vaccinated. When all noses are marked, we let the sheep go to join the already vaccinated on the flats behind us; we then bring another 25 into the treatment pen keeping them bunched closely together to prevent them from moving which is easier on them and easier for us.
Gestating ewes must be vaccinated with CD/T several weeks prior to lambing to pass clostridium antibodies on to their lambs in colostrum, the first milk from the udder. This vaccination is crucial to lamb survival as the lambs' immune systems don't begin to develop until six weeks of age.
CD/T (Clostridium Perfringens Types C & D plus Tetanus Toxoid) is a commonly used vaccine that is also approved for use in certified organic sheep; it guards against tetanus infection and enterotoxemia (overeaters disease) which is a painful, gastric affliction that is untreatable and causes a lamb's death usually within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms.