Midwifery

We've been very lucky so far with A.'s sheep when it comes to lambing. They've never needed any assistance from us to deliver their lambs, and all of them have been good mothers. Until yesterday.

Yesterday morning, A. announced that Tillie, one of the younger Merinos who has been looking about ready to pop with her first lamb for weeks now, had separated herself from the rest of the flock. That's a sign that labor is beginning. Unfortunately, the flock was all up in the big pasture, which made it pretty much impossible to catch Tillie to put her in the barn where we could watch her. The Merinos are more like wild animals than the Cotswolds, which are so tame they're almost like dogs. The Merinos prefer to do their lambing in the open, with no people around. So A. left her up there and went to check on her from time to time.

He saw the little feet starting to come out at one check-up. Then he saw the head. And he knew there was trouble. It was a BIG head, obviously belonging to a very big lamb. And Tillie is not very big. But more distressing was the fact that the tongue on the lamb was sticking out.

Not a good sign.

So A. came back to the house to ask me to help him catch Tillie to pull the lamb out. Up we went to the pasture, where Tillie, though still on her feet and moving around, wasn't moving very fast (big surprise, considering there was HALF A LAMB hanging out her hind end) and so was relatively easy to catch. Then I straddled her and held her in place while A. took up his position behind her to pull while she was contracting.

The lamb was out with a couple more contractions and pulls. Then I let Tillie go. And she ran off.

Oh shit.

Mother sheep are NOT supposed to leave their lambs when they're first born. They're supposed to lick them clean until the lambs are up on their feet, and then make sure they're nursing.

Tillie ran right to the rest of the flock. She was obviously somewhat traumatized and uncomfortable with our presence. So A. checked the lamb to make sure it was alive and then backed away from it, while I slowly herded the whole flock towards the lamb until Tillie was close enough to see her lamb. Then she started licking it and taking care of it. Thank God.

We left them alone for the rest of the day, with A. checking on them occasionally. The lamb was up and trying to nurse, so he decided to not mess around with them too much. But then this morning, when he checked on them, the lamb was hunched and unhappy looking and Tillie's udder looked swollen. The lamb kept trying to nurse, and Tillie kept moving away. It looked to me like Tillie's teats were blocked and her udder was engorged, which meant it was probably painful when the lamb tried to nurse and that's why she kept dancing away.

I could sympathize.

This meant we now had to catch Tillie so A. could milk her and get the milk coming. Easier said than done.

After a couple of abortive attempts to catch her in the open field, we finally grabbed her lamb and brought it down to the shed at the bottom of the pasture, with Tillie following along until she was in the shed and we could corner her. Then A. milked her and got the milk coming, at which point the lamb latched right on and sucked for all it was worth. We shut Tillie and her lamb in the shed for awhile, so she would have to stay put and the lamb could nurse.

So. Current lamb count: 8, with one more ewe left to deliver. And GOOD LORD am I keeping my fingers crossed that it's an uneventful delivery, because this ovine midwifery is just a wee bit more complicated than the human kind, what with the general stupidity of the patients.