Sorry for not adding any new posts in a week. I have been consumed, literally, if you take into account how many meals I have missed or put off, by this first round of lambing. There are only thirteen ewes in the first round, but because these new (to me) high production sheep needed closer nutritional management than I gave them during late gestation (especially minerals with which I was extremely lax), I am dealing with a lot of weak lambs, which means that I have spent a lot of time making sure they are eating and keeping warm, not to mention feeding my two (now three — see below) bottle babies every four to six or so hours around the clock (last feeding at 10pm, first feeding at 4am).
I have been up since 2:15am when I fed the most recently added bottle lamb, who is currently a house lamb, spending some time in a large quilt lined Tupperware container in my bedroom closet because there is a radiator in there so it is nice and cozy. It is now 4:30am, and I just got back from feeding the bottle lambs that are down in the barn, where all is well. The newest lambs were able to stay warm enough through the night, and all four of them were up and about when I entered the barn.
The newest little bottle lamb, a ewe lamb, one of triplets, was born very weak yesterday evening. She had not been delivered soon enough. For some reason, with that lamb, the ewe had very weak contractions. The lamb was actually in there for so long that it passed its meconium poop while still in the ewe. When it came out it was covered in dark dark slime and bits and pieces of chunky black gunk. The ewe tended to the lamb, but the lamb was weak. I gave it a half an hour, but after that I called my sheep mentor (who has been invaluable to me over the past two weeks) and she said that the lamb was probably already starting to get chilled (and she was, her feet were freezing, although her mouth was not yet ice cold), so I would need to take her up to the house, warm her in a water bath, and then tube her. I had already planned on tubing her, so I had milked some colostrum from the ewe.
After warming the lamb in the hot water bath, Jen and I dried her off and then tubed her. The first couple of tries the tube went into the lambs lungs, but on the third or fourth try, the lamb swallowed just at the right time and it pulled the tube down into the esophagus and after a few more swallows, into the stomach. I knew, because the tube went in much further than it could have if it were in the lungs, that the tube was in the stomach, but I was still nervous as hell. The last thing I wanted to do was drown the lamb. Regardless, it needed to be done, and Jen and I were going to need to do it. I attached the warmed syringe full of colostrum to the tube and pulled the plunger out so the colostrum would slowly gravity feed down the tube. I got about an ounce and a half in and then pulled the syringe out and after a second, the tube, hoping that no liquid spilled into the lungs on the way out.
“If it had been in her lungs, she’d be dead, right?” Jen asked after a couple of minutes. She was holding the lamb to her chest, wrapped in a towel, gently breathing on its head to keep it warm and calm. She paced slowly around the kitchen.
“I think so,” I said. “It was in the stomach, definitely. When you go into the lungs the tube only goes in a few inches, and you can hear the breathing coming out of the tube. It went in far enough. It was in the stomach.”
While Jen held the lamb, I set to getting the tupperware motel set up in the closet, but the tupperware came out of the garage, so we needed to let it sit in the closet for a few minutes to warm up. Then we put the lamb in and sat down to eat our cold pizza. When Jen had left to pick up the pizza I was down in the barn and she had no idea she would find me in the kitchen with a slimy lamb submerged up to its nose in hot water in the kitchen sink when she got back. She took it in stride, as she does.
After about twenty minutes, Jen and I went to check on the lamb. She was standing and stumbling around the tupperware trying to suck on every fold of the quilt that she came across. She had made it! She is still at risk of pneumonia from possibly ingesting amniotic fluid while in the birth canal, but she had made it.
Jen and I warmed the last couple ounces of the ewe’s colostrum we had left, and I tried to get the lamb to take the bottle. I couldn’t do it. I don’t have the touch. I am too rough. I act too much like, “here’s the damn bottle you stupid lamb, now drink it!” I can’t help it. That’s just the way I am, and eventually I have been able to get all of the lambs I have tried to on the bottle. But, in this case, I felt we were pressed for time, so I asked Jen to do it. She has a way with animals (she has an amazing grasp of animal psychology and behavior) and a much softer and calmer demeanor towards them than I do. Within seconds, she had the lamb drinking from the bottle.
While she was feeding the lamb, I was in the front hall putting my boots and stuff on to go back down to the barn to check on the ewe, who I was worried was in trouble because she had been absolutely huge. I had been expecting triplets, and had only gotten a single. I was worried there were dead lambs inside of her. I was also going down to check on the other ewe and her two lambs that had been delivered at the same time. That ewe had actually had triplets, but one was born with a beating heart, but she was not breathing. Her lips and tongue were blue. I tried to get her breathing, but it didn’t work. I even tried mouth-to-mouth. After a couple of minutes, her heart stopped beating and she was dead. The remaining two (both rams), however, were fine.
When I stepped into the barn, I was amazed. The ewe with the bottle lamb that I had been worried about was fine, and in the couple of hours I had been up at the house taking care of her first lamb, she had delivered two more lambs, both of which were reasonably vigorous. I went into the pen to check on them. One had gotten a drink, but the other one hadn’t.
The ewe and I had had quite a battle earlier in the evening when I needed to milk out some colostrum, and she had already been through a lot with her first difficult delivery, and for all I knew some trouble with the next two as well, but, that lamb that hadn’t gotten a drink needed to, so I pinned the ewe in the corner of the stall with my head and shoulder, grabbed the lamb, and put her in position. She searched for the nipple, but couldn’t quite find it. I tried to help by guiding the nipple to her mouth. We kept missing, but then, after a few minutes, she latched on, and started sucking and sucking and sucking and sucking and sucking…..holy cow!….and sucking and sucking and on and on she went. I was amazed. Part of the reason that she was able to nurse for so long is that the ewe, tag RK1, apparently milks like crazy. Other than the turned out teats, her udder looks more like a goat’s than a sheep’s. After what seemed like an eternity, the little lamb let the nipple slide out of her mouth. I felt her belly and she had definitely drank a lot. Then, since I had the ewe pinned anyway, I picked up the other lamb and got him to latch on as well. He didn’t suckle as long as the ewe lamb.
When I went down to the barn, I had taken a measuring cup with me. I was going to milk the ewe out and get some more colostrum for the house lamb. However, when I saw the two new babies, I paused. I thought perhaps I should just use replacer for the house lamb and leave all of the natural colostrum for the babies she was nursing. Plus, I didn’t want to stress her out any more than I already had. However, while I had her pinned, I felt the other side of her udder and it was still engorged, so since I had her pinned anyway, I decided to milk some more colostrum out for the house lamb. I took four ounces, which once fed, would make eight total of natural colostrum consumed by the house lamb, enough to confer the necessary immunity and using the last two ounces, mix with replacer to help make the transition. But, I wasn’t done. Before letting go of the ewe, I put the little ewe lamb back in position and she went back to town, finding the nipple much faster this time. She didn’t nurse as long the first time, but she still drank a lot. Then I released the ewe, a little pissed, but none the worse for wear.
I had lost track of time, so I was surprised when Jen showed up in the barn with the two bottles for the bottle lambs. It was 9:30pm. I had been with the ewe and then her lambs since 3pm when she first started to go into labor.
Jen and I fed the bottle lambs, snickering and commenting on their enthusiasm and madly wagging tails as always, and then we went back up to the house. I asked Jen to feed the house lamb again just to make sure it went well, and it did. She drank two ounces right down.
I set the alarm for 12am to feed the bottle lamb again, but it didn’t go off because I was so tired that I accidentally set it for 12pm. I did wake up on my own at 2am, so I got up to feed the house lamb. After Jen’s two bottle feedings, the lamb recognized the bottle and took right to it. She drank the last two ounces of ewe colostrum and was clearly still hungry, so I mixed up a batch of colostrum replacer, adding it to the remnants of the ewe colostrum that were in the measuring cup, maybe half an ounce, hoping that it would mask the taste difference. She drank three ounces of the colostrum replacer.
It is now 5:30am and time to feed the house lamb again. After this last feeding of colostrum replacer, I will switch her over to regular milk replacer. As long as she doesn’t get pneumonia, and I actually don’t think she will, her breathing, which had been raspy in those first few hours, is now clear, she should be fine.
So far, eight out of the thirteen ewes have lambed and have delivered eighteen lambs, of which sixteen are currently alive. One died of hypothermia when the ewe delivered twins outside before I penned them up, and one of the triplets born (a nice sized ewe lamb) yesterday evening was born with a beating heart, but was not breathing and died after a couple of minutes in spite of my efforts to get her breathing. My current lamb delivery rate is 225%. That is, on average, my ewes are delivering 2.25 lambs each. There have been three sets of triplets, four sets of twins, and one single. Subtracting the two dead lambs, and assuming that all of the lambs currently living make it to weaning, my weaned lamb rate, as of right now, will be 200%, or two lambs per ewe. In contrast, my weaned lamb rate last year from twenty three ewes from a non-prolific breed was 125%, or 1.25 lambs per ewe.
Over the past two weeks I have for the first time
- Brought two lambs back to life in warm water baths
- Successfully tube fed a lamb
- Unsuccessfully given mouth to mouth (it was good practice though)
- Corrected a badly presented lamb by pushing the lamb back into the birth canal, fishing around for the front leg that was bent backwards, and slowly, carefully pulling it forward
- Watched a ewe deliver a breeched lamb on her own as I rushed into the barn to help when I heard her screaming. As I crossed the barn to help her, she hunkered down, pushed like hell, screamed once more, and shot that backwards lamb right out of her backside.
There are five ewes to go in this round, and I would just like to let them know that I have had enough lambing adventures for the time being. Let’s just have five sets of nice vigorous, easily delivered lambs that require no interventions on my part, ‘k?