Surprise Lambs!

Sorry the pictures are no good. It’s dark in there, and they’re wiggly, and Agnes is not a willing mom, and is certainly not into being suck in the pen with them, so I try to get in and out as quickly as possible so she doesn’t freak out and trample them while they’re still so little and unsteady. They’re really freaking adorable, so I really hope they make it. Thank God they were born yesterday instead of the day before, when we were in the middle of a snow storm. Yesterday everything melted and made a bog, but luckily, I caught Agnes in labor before I left for Spinsters Club, and we were able to rush around and get a makeshift pen and barn door made, and put down plenty of fresh straw. But I really wish I had known this was a possibility, so I could have read up on it and been prepared. Then I’d have known my ass from a hole in the ground, I could have better facilitated their bonding instead of fussing over them & throwing things off. Or at least I could have made sure we had the cell phone charged, so I could get a real-time blow-by-blow of what to do. But if you wish in one hand and shit in the other, you’ll see which one fills up first.

So here’s the whole story…

Over the last couple of weeks, Agnes has gotten suspiciously barrel-like and I kept saying that if I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was pregnant. The knowing better part came from the fact that I bought her as an unbred lamb (breeders divvy up the herd, but apparently enterprising suitor can overcome barriers). But in the last week, she’d started to look so distrubingly round that I even toyed with the notion of including lambing supplies with a supply order I was putting together, as sort of an insurance policy (Murphy’s Law: if I’m prepared, I won’t need them). If I had been smart, I’d’ve emailed Tina a picture & asked her opinion. But I think I was in denial.

Then Sunday, when I went out to hay the sheep, I heard a very weird moaning sound, and when Agnes trotted up for her cookie, she was trailing a mucousy glob out her backside.

I called Jennifer, who giggled relentlessly and recommended I feel her udder. It took some detective work, since she’s in full fleece  and her udder was tucked up pretty high, but yeah, it was totally taut and her teats were like pinkie fingers.

I didn’t plan to breed them, so I never bothered to read the lambing sections of any of the books, never built lambing jugs, never bought any supplies–never even finished the barn door!–and now there was no time.  I called up Tina and she ran through the basics, but thought I’d still have plenty of time. I pretty much only had time to tie a cattle panel to the unfinished door frame and grab a towel before I saw a little nose and feet sticking out. Agnes, who had laid down for a minute, let out a long grunt, and gotten back up, now seemed far more concerned with stuffing herself with hay than pushing out the little face poking out her nethers.

I ran back inside (Ron forgot his charger in Austin, the cell phone was almost dead, and our house phones only range about 100 feet from the building), called Tina back, got instructions, ran back outside, went to grab the little feet and nose with my towel only to discover there was only one foot, ran back inside, called back and asked if I was going to have to stick my hand in there and find the other foot, learned that yes, indeed, I was, and make it snappy. So I dragged Ron (who was already pretty sick) out there to hold her head while I plunged my hand in, desperately rooted around, finally found the foot, and helped the little bugger out. At the end, Agnes finally laid down and pitched in with a little heave, then conked out from exhaustion for a few minutes. The lamb was big and warm and wiggly, good news! He was also adorable, black with while socks and a white nose and a long, wiggly tail.

I knew I was supposed to dry him off and put it in front of mom’s nose, which I did, but I didn’t realize I was supposed to leave him there until they started talking to each other–and I also knew he was supposed to get some colostrum (the first, gooey, antibody-rich secretions before the regular milk) right away, so I panicked and moved him to the teat too soon. So I think it’s my fault they didn’t bond & Agnes seems utterly indifferent to them. I think she’s also a bit confused and doesn’t get they came out of her, and she’s too young to have seen anyone else lambing.

After we got the lamb dried off, I went back inside, gave Tina the update, got further instructions (if he’s not nursing right away, milk out some colostrum & feed it with a syringe), but when I got back, Ron looked a little shell-shocked and presented a second lamb, this one half the size of the first and all black, except for a few tufts of white on her head. She was a lot weaker and not as warm, so we dried her off pretty well warmed her in my lap and spent the next little while milking out some colostrum and giving it to both of them with the syringe, then trying to keep Agnes from crushing them both. Ron and I took turns watching them and checking in with Tina for the next step.

Eventually, caked in colostrum and mucous (we went through half a dozen towels–the stuff is way gooey and slippery and hard to get off–not at all like drying off a dog after a bath, which is what I had pictured), I called Tina back & she said we needed to make a much smaller pen then get the hell out of there, because they wouldn’t bond if we kept fussing around them, and Agnes would probably get more worked up and weirder. So we quickly cut and wired together a partition from a cattle panel I luckily had on hand, shored it up with a couple bails of hay, rinsed out the mineral bucket for water that the lambs couldn’t accidentally stumble into (it’s the kind that hooks over a rail), hooked up a heat lamp (that’s 200+ feet of extension cord, as the barn had no power, since I wasn’t planning to lamb–but luckily, I had the cords all ready to go because of Saturday’s snow storm), and beat a hasty retreat, leaving them alone for a couple hours, as ordered.

When we  checked back, Agnes didn’t seem any more enthusiastic about them, but she did seem a bit calmer, and they were up and wiggling their adorable long tails and walking around, trying to nurse off mom’s armpits (they’re apparently no better at being lambs than she is at being a mom). I checked back once more a couple of hours later, gave everyone a quick shot of Nutri-Drench, then let them be for the night.

For his part, all the standing around in the wet (it was sunny out, but we had about 5 inches of snow Saturday, which had melted all at once, making the ground a cold, wet sponge) made Ron much sicker, and he collapsed into bed with a fever, which finally broke around midnight. I made him soup and tea with honey and tried not to be too excited about how warm he was making the bed–it was like having a giant hot water bottle. I’m so glad he was here to help me–he’s got this very slow, calm, heavy energy that animals really like. I’m high strung by nature, so if I’m aggitated, really have to suppress my vibe around animals or they get high strung, too. Naturally, that’s harder to do when you’re anxious & completely out of your element, so I was so very grateful for Ron (even though I felt like a dick for dragging him out there when we was so clearly ill).

The dad is Roger, AKA Mr. Fabulous, Ewephoria Farm’s gorgeous spotted merino ram, not Mr. Shivers, my Shetland wether. He’s has been such a turd lately, butting everyone all the time, that I was half-worried he hadn’t been wethered properly. She must have been bred right before she came here, as her twin had gotten knocked up as well, and just lambed–and they had been pastured together. She’s apparently a better mom, but she only had one, and there are dozens of role models there and none here. Tina had told me that even though her fleece was white, she was a black-factored ewe, so if she was bred with a spotted ram, we’d get spotted babies. I didn’t actually need first-hand evidence, but she was right! And of course, though I didn’t want them & really don’t know what I’ll do with them, they’re so adorable that I’m madly in love with them already and terrified they won’t survive.

They made it to the next morning, and Tina stopped by to check up on them. She put the bands on their tails (the wiggly tails are adorable, but they hang down, not up like a dog’s, so they basically become giant poop grabbers and invite fly-strike; the easiest way to remove them is compression bands, basically a super-tight rubber band that cuts off circulation so the tissue below it withers & dies). She gave them a little shot of something numbing first & they didn’t even seem to notice. The tails should wither & fall off in a couple weeks. She also give mom a shot of penicillin (because of my hand) and some hormones that will hopefully help with the mothering instinct (I gave her a follow up shot last night; I can’t say I see any change, though), and the babies got tetnus vaccinations. She also brought me a bottle & a little milk replacer. I’ll be bottle-feeding the little one, at least until she’s stronger, because Agnes wasn’t making a ton of milk and she just can’t compete with her big brother for food. But now have Agnes is on grain twice a day, so hopefully her milk ramp up (I checked it last night & it squirted out immediately). I’m hoping once she’s a little more full & her udder drops (which may or may  not be something that actually happpens–her udder is still pretty high and inaccessible, but I’ve seen pictures with the udders hanging down, so I’m hoping), that she’ll be grateful to be milked out and won’t discourage them from nursing (right now, she usually stomps her foot and moves after a couple seconds).

I’m sort of getting the hang of coming in, checking mom’s food and water, checking her milk, feeding the baby, checking the boy’s mouth (if they have a warm mouth, that means they’re sneaking milk here and there, even if you never see them even pointed at the right end of the ewe–he seems to be very optimistic about finding a nipple at the knee or armpit), without disrupting things too much, so I’ll try to bring her grain a little earlier today and get some better shots of them together while she’s pigging out. Suzanne said she couldn’t tell the scale from these & thought the ram lamb was about the size of Kiki, my old 50# dog. He is not. He’s more the size Toddy, her old 8# dog.

I ordered a scale which should arrive today, and I’m guessing 7 or 8# for him and maybe 4 or 5 for her. She doesn’t seem any heavier than a bag of flour, and he seems about the same as a small bag of cat food. [ETA: I was WAY off. She’s only 3# after her bottle on day 3, and he’s just 5#.]

That’s a human baby bottle, so that should give you some scale for her.