My biggest challenge so far with my first lambing season is knowing what’s normal, and conversely, what’s not, and when to intervene.  The trouble is that the process of mammalian birth looks like a terribly evolutionary joke, even when things are going perfectly.  A lamb is going to come out of there??  Yeah, right…

Except for the Caesarian on #132, things have gone very smoothly.  Births have tended to happen swiftly, when I’m not looking — suddenly there’s a lamb on the barn floor! — and I was starting to wonder if I’d get to witness the actual moment that one of the lambs was born.  So this morning, when I found #158 in fairly advanced labor, I thought that I could hang out a bit and see the lamb come into the world.

I wasn’t entirely clear how long it would take, but after the lamb’s head had been sticking out for more than 20 minutes with no progress, and the little tongue was starting to turn blue, things didn’t seem right.  I called Denise, who confirmed the not-rightness and coached me through getting the lamb unstuck.  I now know that the trick is to pull down on the feet, which frees the shoulders and clears the traffic jamb.  As the lamb emerged, I saw that the umbilical cord was tightly wrapped around his torso, so I did a little more untangling and pulled him all the way out.

With a normal birth (I declaim, from my vast experience…) the lamb emerges crying and trying to stand, and the ewe responds by cleaning off the amniotic sac and birth fluids, and encouraging it to suckle.  This time, mother and offspring were both a bit stunned, ewe from exhaustion and lamb from anoxia, I assume, so the usual dance was not getting started.  The ewe wasn’t acknowledging the lamb, and he was unable to cry or stand to get her attention.  I moved them into a jug, dried off the lamb, milked the ewe, and tube fed the lamb.  After the ewe drank some molasses water, she started to seem herself, but the little ram lamb still hasn’t figured out how to get milk from his mom.  I’ve been milking and tube-feeding and hoping he starts to get it together.  So trust, but verify.