Sticky Hands and Stinky Knees

 

It's lambing season. Our farm has 170 ewes. A  birthing  average worth bragging about would be two lambs per ewe, but nature has a way of skewing the odds a little lower.

For instance, last week we had a snowstorm. The thirty sheep on pasture in front of our house are due to lamb in March. But somehow a roaming Romeo found at least one of them, and she gave birth to twins in whiteout conditions. One of the twins made it. The other stepped into a deep cow track and couldn’t get out.

We weren’t even aware that they were out there until a neighbor called. Other than feeding them once a day, these sheep don’t get much of our attention,. Their sisters in the maternity barn need us more. So, by the time we retrieved the one live lamb, it was cold and hungry.

Mama and baby were herded to our woodshed. The ewe was interested in her lamb, which isn’t always the case. She nosed him, nickered and pranced whenever we got near. And, baby was hungry. He bawled and sucked our fingers. But, he couldn’t seem to make sense of his mama’s udder. Cold had dulled his instincts.

Joe grabbed the ewe by the neck and manhandled her into a corner. He pushed his knee into her side to hold her there while I dropped to my knees in the hay.With my head pressed against her hip, I stuffed the baby’s head under his mama’s belly. He rooted around, grabbed a hunk of wool and started sucking. Right idea, wrong location.

So, I pushed his mouth right next to a teat,  pried his mouth open with my thumb and pointer finger and then jammed the teat into his mouth. He slurped, spit it out, and grabbed wool again.

We repeated this process until my back was in knots and my neck was cracking. Mama Ewe was pretty patient, but eventually she began kicking at her baby every time I pushed the teat in his mouth. 

After about fifteen minutes, the hungry lamb butted his mama’s udder, wiggle-waggled his tail, and started sucking in earnest. When I let go of him, he bawled, lost the teat and sucked wool again.

I stayed beside him as long as my achy back would let me, then stood up and stretched. Baby backed away, too, but he shook his whole body: a good sign that a lamb has eaten his fill.

I studied the knees of my coveralls. They were covered in shit, and my hands were covered with sticky colustrum  and bits of hay.

By the next morning, the lamb was making it on his own and we turned his momma and him out two days later.

Every lambing season is like this. There are always lambs to help. It is a frustrating, stinky, back-cramping job. But the reward is the field full of lambs I watched running in the sun, yesterday.  They played follow the leader, pounding across the lot, skidding around a tree, and then galloping pell-mell back to their mamas who were chewing their cuds and gossiping by the fence. The lambs blew steam in the cold air, panted, and then took off again.

Sticky hands and stinky knees always remind me that there is always some good that comes with the bad. That hard things just need to be done. That we aren’t really in control of anything.