Kitchen Lamb

There's a lamb in the house this morning. I don't know if she's going to make it, but she's one of the toughest fighters we've ever seen.

I'll try to keep this short. She was born and left to the side yesterday afternoon. When I found her, she was so cold, I couldn't pry her mouth open to intubate her. The tube had to be slipped in the side of her mouth and maneuvered into place. We put the heat lamp dangerously close and, an hour and a half later, she was on her feet. Every time she tried to nurse, she was bumped aside. When she lay on the ground for too long, her mother pawed viciously, trying to get her up. Bruiser kept trying to nurse, but was an absolute underdog: tiny, frail, fighting, but failing.

Here's Ryan's rendition of the evening (Bruiser and one sibling were delivered early in the afternoon. Eight-year-old Ryan picks up the story around 4:45 p.m.):

"Well, it all started when Elva and her friend came to our house to see the baby lambs. They were checking them out and right when they were about to leave, I saw Bruiser's mama was going to have more babies. The first one was a goner. My mom swung it around, and shaked it, and almost did CPR. And then she said, 'I'll check if she has another one.' And, she did. She had one more. Mom had just put iodine on the little, little baby (Bruiser) and it crawled on the new baby and that was the most colorful lamb--yellow, blue, purple, red, just like a rainbow. And of course, then Elva and her friend went home.

Mom said, 'We'll check on them after supper.' So we did. And that little lamb was very, very, very cold. Dad tried just rubbing on her and blood came out her side. We decided to try a few things--like stitches and glue--because there was a cut. Nothing worked. So went to go to bed. In the morning, we thought it would be dead.  We hoped it wouldn't, but we thought it would.

But, in the morning, Mom went out, found the baby, and it was standing there by the bucket, alive.  She brang it in. And now it's lying down, resting, in a box, with a blanket over it.  The end."

More to come....

Jublilation

I went to the barn this morning to check on our 11 ewes who are due to begin lambing--and found a beautiful set of quadruplets.  They were in a corner surrounded by three very busy mamas.  No pictures of the rodeo, but it did take some finagling to get the calf locked up and the right mama in a jug (small pen) with all four of her babies.

Surrogate Mama Number One was motivated by some aggressive ear-twisting to get out of the pen.  Surrogate Mama Number Two left on her own.  Needless to say, there was much mayhem.  When a ewe lambs, she instinctively turns in circles, looking for her prodigy and, once it's standing, nudges it to her udder.  Now that all the mamas heard the high-pitched bleating of the babies, they responded with deep-throated calls and turned in circles, running into each other.  One of the mamas who "lost" her babies was calling and pawing at the closed gate.

To warm the little ones up, I grabbed a heat lamp out from under the window cupboard (a 2x12" board that lifts on hinges across its top edge), climbed up onto the sides of the jug, and hung the lamp from a 16-penny nail in the wooden ceiling beam.  The cord didn't reach the outlet.  I would need an extension cord.  Before leaving for the cord, I fed and watered the mama hoping to distract her long enough for the babies to eat.

When we have triplets or quadruplets, we give them a boost by tube-feeding them pre-mixed colostrum.  Knowing a belly of warm milk would give them the shivers, I ran to the machine shop to get the necessary extension cord, shuffled back over the icy gravel to the barn, went through 2 sets of doors, a gate, and up on the sides of the jug, kissing cobwebs, to plug in the lamp.

I mixed the colostrum in the house, returned to the barn, checked the mama's udder to make sure she had milk (ewes have a wax plug at the end of each tit that has to be released before milk can pass).  Then I tube fed three of the babies, trimming and treating their fresh umbilical cords.  The other little one was contentedly nursing, so I let him be.

After Laura woke up we went to barn together.

 

By now everyone was settled down--except Grace's calf, Falcon.  He was so excited that he kept rubbing up against us, head-butting and pushing. 

After a sound pat on his side, he would run and jump in mad circles around the barn.  He was still running and jumping even as we left.  Who knew birthdays could be so exciting?