Lambing Season is here!

  Earlier in the evening our big, woolly ewe, Whoopi, had given birth to a ram lamb who we decided to call Degas. When we found him, he was soaking wet and looking chilly so when temps dropped into the thirties, I decided to make a late night check on him and to see if any of our other sheep had decided to lamb. Of course I had my trusty farm dog, Rialey, at my side.

  I shined a flashlight into the darkness and saw the reflection of the eyes of most of the flock standing in a bunch near the poultry pens. Scanning with my light, I caught a gleam halfway across the field near one of the rabbit tractors, then a little sparkle down close to the ground. Someone else had lambed!

  I hurried to the poultry house and flicked on the lights to see it was Bonnie standing off by herself with a little white ball of fluff on the ground at her feet. Bonnie has a history of abandoning her lambs so I knew there was no way I was going to leave her out with that little baby on a cold night.

  Swinging into action, I cleared out the milk room of some indignant lady goats and grabbed our lamb sling, a makeshift leash (half of a tie down strap) and put Rialey in a stay. I slowly tried to approach momma, but she beat hooves and headed for the rest of the flock, baby in tow. I caught up with the little one, scooped it up, and very quickly transferred it to the lamb sling.

  Sheep are funny creatures. For some reason, if you pick up a lamb, momma will have no clue what happened to her baby and start frantically searching as if the little thing had suddenly vanished into thin air. The lamb sling, a simple loop of plastic, lets the sheep see her lamb again. As long as it is held close to the ground, momma will almost always follow the lamb wherever you want. The other advantage of using the swing is lambs tend to go completely limp when carried for any length of time. It's like they are thinking, "Well, the predator has got me. Might as well die now." When you put them down after being carried, it always takes a while for them to come back to themselves. The sling keeps the babies coherent and calling for mom. Like I said, sheep are very odd creatures.

  Anyway, I got the lamb in the sling and eventually caught Bonnie's collar and with one hand secured her with the hook from the strap. With me and little lamby in the front and Rialey bringing up the rear, we were able to get mother and child safely tucked away in a cozy room. I set Bonnie up with water, hay, and a little feed then pinned her to the wall while she ate to make sure both her teats were clear and both sides of her udder were producing. All that done, I gathered baby again and found that Bonnie had had her first little girl. Using the sling and a small fish scale, I found the girl was a very respectable 8.4lbs. Later we decided on the name Dora for the girl.

  With Bonnie and her little eweling all settled in, I started to head back to the house only to realize that I hadn't yet checked on Whoopi and Degas. The little ram lamb was up and spunky. He was warm and dry with a full belly and a clean rear end. Whoopi had passed her placenta in the pen, so I called Rialey in to retrieve it (a rare and much prized treat for the farm dog) while Whoopi did her best to shield her little one from the wolf-beast and stomped for all she was worth. Ry backed her up, grabbed the placenta, and happily brought her prize back up to the house for a late night snack!

Charger and Chance

  It was a chilly Monday morning and Big Onion and I were out doing chores. I was busy feeding the chickens when I saw Big Onion heading for the gate to the second pasture. He thought he'd heard the calling of a lamb and decided to investigate. Never one to be left out of the excitement, I tagged along.

 There in the middle of the second pasture all alone was this big, strong, totally dry ram lamb. He was chocolate colored so our thoughts went straight to Bonnie who had a dark colored lamb last year and abandoned him. The lamb was running around the pasture and calling with big strong lungs. Big Onion scooped him up and I called Rialey to round up the sheep to try and find who left this big guy.

  As soon as Big Onion had the lamb in hand we realized that he wasn't our only problem. There on the hill was a little pile of white fluff. When we got closer, we found another lamb. This one freshly born. She was tiny and wet and barely able to get onto her feet. I set Rialey the task of staying with the baby and getting her cleaned up while Big Onion and I rounded up the sheep and tried to find the errant mother(s).

  At first we were thinking that we had a set of twins on our hands and just one bad mom in the bunch. We got the sheep onto the bridge and confirmed that Bonnie had just given birth by the stringy bits handing from her rear end. We wrestled her into a pen with the two little lambs. It was then that we noticed that Rue had also recently given birth.

  It only made sense that the little ewe lamb was hers. We put Rue and the lamb into another empty pen and tried get the little one to nurse.

  It took forever for her to get up on her feet then even longer to figure out how and where to nurse. Finally, she got everything aligned, but she didn't seem to be getting anything. She'd nurse for a few seconds then stop. She was very hungry and very frustrated.

  We decided to check Rue's udder and found that it was small and hard. When milked, it produced a thick, yellow, waxy substance that did not resemble milk at all. Rue also showed no interest in mothering the baby lamb.

  At that point, we had two options. We could bring this little lamb in and bottle raise her, but with the house already full of six milk guzzling little goats, we were less than thrilled at the idea of adding another to the mix. The other option was to try and encourage Bonnie to take on the second lamb. If we could convince her that both lambs born so close together were hers, maybe we could avoid having another hungry mouth to feed ourselves.

  With some encouragement we were able to get the little lamb who we decided to call Chance to nurse from Bonnie. She got a full belly then settled down to nap in the hay. At that point, Bonnie had accepted her son and was allowing him to nurse. We decided to call the little boy Charger. Before we left them alone, we did see the little ewe lamb nurse from Bonnie again with little protestation on her surrogate mother's part. We left them to work things out and hoped we would come back to two happy, active, full bellied lambs at the end of the day.

What's the Buzz!

  Everyone keeps asking us, "How's Buzz?" "How's that poor little sheep who got stuck in the fence?" I've been meaning to update everyone on the "little" guy, so here's the buzz with Buzz...

Tangled

  Sometimes being a farmer is the most fun, rewarding experience you can imagine. Raising cute fuzzy and feathered creatures. Making and selling products that nourish and make people happy. Other times, it can be the pits!

  Last night we got home very late after work. It was well after dark, and the weather was terrible. Temperatures down in the 30s and just pouring down buckets of rain, thunder and lightning. We lingered in the house and whined a bit about having to go out in the nasty, freezing, slosh for evening chores, but eventually we strapped on our big kid boots, donned our rain suits, and slogged out into the monsoon.

  As we were walking out, Big Onion said that he wanted to lay eyes on the sheep before we did anything else. Sheep are not smart creatures. They have a very annoying habit of getting themselves into trouble especially when the weather is bad. He headed around the corner while I grabbed a flashlight. By the time I got to the shed where the sheep like to spend the night, he had already discovered that little Brownie was missing. Oh, his mother, Bonnie, was there snuggled down in deep hay, high and dry, but her two week old lamb was nowhere to be seen.

  Big Onion and I started an exhaustive search of the pastures. Thinking he could be anywhere, we started looking in all the usual places the sheep like to hang out. In that terrible weather, I was sure we were looking for a body.

  We searched the first pasture. No luck. We scoured the second pasture and even checked in the creek where we lost an already weak and puny lamb about a year ago. Still no luck. We got to the big third pasture and split up. I was checking around the ponds while Big Onion headed down the fence line on the other side of the pasture. I had just rounded the second pond when I heard Big Onion yell in the distance. I hot footed all the way across the pasture through thick mud and deep puddles to find Big Onion huddled over a tiny, brown body lit only by the light from his cell phone.

  I couldn't believe it when he said the baby was alive, but he was in very bad shape. He had somehow gotten himself completely tangled in the line from the electric fence. It was wrapped around both back legs several times as tight as could be and little Brownie was just laying there shivering in the freezing mud. Little guy had all but hogtied himself. Big Onion thinks he way he wrapped the line probably shorted out the fence, so hopefully the poor little thing didn't get shocked too much.

  Of course neither of us had a knife so it took several minutes to untangle the little guy's back legs. They were wrapped up so tight I was sure they would never work again. Once we got him free, I scooped him up and headed straight back to the house, leaving Big Onion to finish all the evening chores. The only thought in my mind was getting this baby warm and dry and trying to save those legs. As I was carrying him past the flock who were all milling around and calling for their dinner, the little guy called out to his mother several times. I took this as a very good sign.

  I got him inside, fended off the hoard of dogs completely intent on getting a sniff of the lamb in my arms, and got the little guy dried off and warmed up in front of the bathroom heater. I was surprised and pleased to find that there was no tissue damage to the legs and that both feet seemed to have blood flow. His membranes were all pink, and he seemed alert. We snuggled in front of the heater while I got my boss on the phone. She recommended alternating a couple of homeopathics, and after the first dose of arnica, Brownie ppoped up and shook himself off. It was obvious then that something was wrong with one leg. His hock was bending the wrong direction.

  I called Big Onion, and he corralled Bonnie into the milking room. I understand there was some serious rodeo'ing involved including a diving leap that left Big Onion's thumb in very slightly better shape than Brownie's hock. We needed to get some nutrition in the little guy. We planned on trying to  hold him and let him get a least a few sips from his mother.

  Brownie and I bundled up and headed back out into the rain. I was in for another surprise when I put him down in the hay because when that little ram caught sight of his mother, he beelined it for her back end and started furiously trying to nurse, dragging that bum back leg with him! This little guy is seriously tough! Unfortunately, his mother didn't seem to have much milk for him at all.
 

  After seeing that he couldn't use the leg properly, we brought him back inside. I gave him a tiny dose of pain meds and wrapped the leg in a way that will hopefully keep it from bending in the wrong direction, and let him heal. He zonked out while we were tending to him.

   We also convinced him to drink a few ounces of fresh goat's milk just to be sure he was well fed for the night then we put him back out to spend the night with his mother in the cozy, dry milk room.

  This morning he was up and about. He is using the bad leg a little. Hopefully that will improve as he gets used to bandage, and it starts to heal.  The good thing is he is so young that he stands a great chance of making a full recovery.

Obviously, the little guy has a fighter's spirit!