The ewe eyes me warily as I squat down next to her and hook my elbow under her neck.
"It doesn't have to be this way," I tell her. Her red ewe lamb dives for a teat and sucks furiously.
She sighs.
"You're not making this easy." The lamb's tail is wagging in double time -- a sure sign that she's getting food.
The ewe gave birth two days ago to twin red lambs. The ram lamb she accepted, the ewe lamb, she did not. Shortly after her birth, the ewe lamb slipped through the gate and into the other pasture. So, the ewe missed that crucial bonding that happens minutes after birth.
My husband and I hopeto re-establish that bond. Ewes identify their young by smell. If a rejected lamb nurses from its mother, then it will begin to smell like her, and the mother may accept it.
We figure it's worth a shot. Better that than have a bottle baby. So, every few hours, either my husband and I go into the ewe's stall and hold her so that the lamb can nurse without being pushed away.
The nursing process takes five to ten minutes, enough time to talk and think and utter that four-letter word: cull.
A ewe is culled for a variety of reasons -- confirmation and lack of mothering ability are the usual suspects. Because these are hair sheep, those ewes with a non-shedding coat are also culled. In the Katahdins, horns are an undesirable trait.
This ewe has horns. Yet, she's gone through four lambing seasons, and we've never found it a reason to cull her.
In the last four seasons, she's produced nine lambs -- a single, triplets, triplets, and now twins. Yet, this is the third year that we've held her so that a lamb can nurse. I gave her the benefit of the doubt the last two years. When a ewe has triplets, they often can't feed all three. And, as I hold her, I find myself giving her the benefit of the doubt this year.
"If you weren't such a nice girl," I tell her as I scratch between her horns. Most ewes would never stand this quietly for me.
The ewe tilts her head so I can scratch behind her horn.
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This is the lamb that bonded with Lambert? Has she ever accepted two lambs? And what abut the lamb who keeps getting pushed away--won't she grow up feeling rejected?
ReplyDeleteThis is the lamb that went through the gate, and she couldn't clean off. When she had triplets, she accepted two out of three lambs...
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, the rejected lamb doesn't have a complex. It just learns that people=food.