When I was looking for sheep to start my flock, one of my criteria was the ability to lamb without assistance, but until today I hadn’t had the nerve to test the premise.  This morning, about 30 minutes before I was supposed to leave for a meeting in Boston, I noticed that #126 had broken her water.  I figured that the labor would last another hour-and-a-half, and I agonized for a few minutes about postponing my meeting.  With a bit of trepidation, I decided I needed to trust the genetics I had supposedly gotten in these ewes; I put the laboring ewe in an enclosure by herself and headed out to my meeting (and the 3 more after it).  I arrived home around 6pm, and the ewe had done her job, bringing a giant (yuuuuge?) ram lamb healthily into the world.

The bigger news was in the lambing jug on the other side of the barn, though.  Even though the bottle feeding was keeping the little ram lamb alive, his distress cry — I’m hungry! I’m lonely! why doesn’t my mom like me! — greeted me every time I came in to check on him.

When all is going well with a ewe and lamb, those cries help the ewe find her newborn, and she responds with a low chuckling sound that calms the lamb.  The little call-and-response that develops between them helps ewe and lamb stay together in the chaos of the barn, and it’s the soundtrack that tells me all is well.  Tonight I heard it for the first time from the bottle lamb and his mother.

She was finally letting him nurse as much as he wanted, and was cleaning him as he drank.

I offered him the bottle with milk replacer, and for the first time, he wasn’t interested beyond a sip or two. Tonight was a great lesson in learning to trust the resiliency of sheep.

Postscript:  As I was loading my hands and pockets for evening chores in the barn, my driving-muddled brain started riffing on Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, and the riddle scene in Tolkein’s The Hobbit (“What has the wretched hobbit got in hisss pocketssss?!).  My list, much more prosaic:

• Left vest pocket:  4oz milk replacer in a glass bottle (borrowed from hummingbird feeder) with a Pritchard teat, dog treats.
• Right vest pocket:  iodine solution in a small mason jar for sterilizing the new lamb’s umbilical cord, and a 10mL syringe loaded with 7mL of oxytetracycline for the ewe recovering from a C-section, baling twine, hay.
• Left hand:  Half a gallon of warm water with 1/4 cup of molasses to encourage the recovering ewe to drink.
• Right hand:  5 gallons of very warm water (so it doesn’t freeze immediately) in a jerry can for the rest of the flock.
• Pants pockets:  keys (tractor, truck, car), chapstick, Opinel knife, more dog treats, poop bags, handkerchief, mobile phone, flashlight, odd bits of hay.