by Jon Katz
Amanda Alderink and Kirk Ayling from the Granville vet service had each delivered lectures on lamb care during their unnervingly frequent visits to care for Carol and the flock. They explained how to spot trouble during labor, how the fetus should be positioned, how to reach in and pull it out if necessary, how to trim the wool around the udders so that the babies could reach them, how to keep the mothers and lambs strong.
I joked weakly that I’d probably just phone one of them instead, but the vets reminded me that I’d be the one out there in the pasture in the dark (invariably) and that sometimes birth moved fast and got ugly.
So Amanda and Kirk both spoke slowly and repeated their instructions several times, perhaps noticing the look of growing alarm on my face. Besides listening to the vets’ lectures, I’d also trawled websites, ordered pamphlets and books, and talked to a half-dozen sheep farmers. Joanne Smith, who’d been through this several times and whose advice was rock solid, warned me that I was in for a rougher ride than I imagined.
On one level, I was certainly ready. I had ordered supplements called “sheep’s first milk” and “milk replacement,” plus vitamins and penicillin, worming medication, tubes, and syringes; I’d collected basins, buckets, and towels. Joanne’s sling would allow me to carry a newborn while slowly walking backward, to lead a new mother into the barn.
I’d bought implements I’d never heard of before, notably a pig castrator to dock the lambs’ tails (for sanitary, not aesthetic, reasons), taggers, and ear tags to identify the lambs and ewes. I had molasses ready to mix with warm water to recharge famished mothers after delivery. My kitchen looked like a hospital triage station, covered with bottles and nipples, medications and needles. Inside the creaky old barn, we’d rigged up a series of lights and lamps and enclosures.
Anthony had installed a green swinging gate to divide the space and keep the donkeys apart, enhanced the electrical power to the barn, and built plywood pens with sliding wooden entrances. He checked in several times a day, usually leaving a message that said, in its entirety, “Yo! You alive?” Joanne and Ray had lent me a more elegant enamel lambing pen.
The new electrical outlets allowed for giant tubs of heated water, so that the exhausted moms wouldn’t face frozen buckets, and heat lamps to keep newborns warm during their critical first few hours. There were bales of straw for bedding and hay for food tucked everywhere.
But if I felt ready on a practical level, I was in every other way unprepared. Lambing seemed an enormous undertaking. I was already wearied by the long winter and the simple but endless chores of farm life. Now everything was about to get more complex; even sleeping in a warm bed for more than a few hours at a stretch seemed hard to manage. The specter of dead ewes or dying lambs haunted me. All sorts of things could happen out there, with nobody to come to your rescue at two A.M. Besides, I didn’t really want to call a vet every time there was trouble, tempting though that was. I wanted to handle lambing season myself, if I could.
This post-midnight visit to the pasture, now a nightly routine, wasn’t about having a mystical experience; it was necessary. When I’d set up Bedlam Farm, I imagined I would grow restless and bored after five or six months, anxious to spend more time back in New Jersey or begin working on another project. So I’d decided to breed the sheep right away, ensuring births in early March. Not grasping the implications, or imagining the severity of the winter, I had brought Nesbitt in early to do his stuff. As it turned out, I was never either restless or bored, not for a second. The winter had been difficult, but exhilarating. I had expected to move on, but now could hardly imagine life away. Nevertheless, I was lambing at this time of the year, which meant that the complexity and dangers had increased dramatically.
Lambs, like other mammals, are born slippery and wet, covered in fluids. And my flock was lambing in one of the most brutal winters in recent history. A newborn could freeze to the ground in minutes.
Those first moments are crucial in many ways. The mother not only tries to make her baby warm and dry by licking it (gaining some important nutrients for herself in the process), but that’s how she understands the lamb is hers—she bonds with it by its smell and its sound. After a couple of days in a pen, lambs and ewes will not forget that they belong together. Outside the barn, that can make the difference between warmth and freezing, protectiveness and rejection, nourishment and starvation, a grisly encounter with a predator or a safe spot in the herd. A lot of things can do in a tiny lamb.
My geography didn’t help. In the cold and dark, with ewes milling around a fairly large sloping pasture, a newborn could easily get separated from its mother. After just a few minutes apart, she was likely to reject her lamb, who would then either starve or require risky and less healthy bottle feeding. Ewes, I was told, varied wildly as to mothering. Some were attentive and diligent, others flighty and quick to abandon their offspring.
So there were all sorts of reasons I needed to be on hand tonight: to make sure the birth went smoothly, to intervene if necessary, to keep the ewe and lamb together, to get the lamb into a sling as quickly as possible. Then, walking backward with the lamb in my arms, slowly so that the ewe wouldn’t lose her lamb’s scent, I’d bring them both into the barn, into a pen and under a heat lamp. It would be no small feat, especially in sub-zero temperatures.
Many farmers lamb in barns, but my hardy Tunis sheep had never developed a taste for barns. In fact, they’d bust through doors trying to get out. Even when the wind chill reached minus fifty one January night, the ewes sat huddled together at the top of the hill, exposed to the cold and the wind. I’d put grain and hay in the barn to tempt them down, but they showed little interest. Besides, even my spacious old barn didn’t have enough space for more than a few ewes in labor. There was really no other way: they had to be, and wanted to be, outside, so I had to be with them.
Carr and some of my other neighbors ridiculed my worries about these lambs: “Let nature take its course.” “They’ll take care of themselves.” “They’ve been doing this for hundreds of years.” “You might lose a few, but that’s nature’s way.” It wasn’t my way. I had strong feelings about keeping faith with creatures under my care. If lambs died under circumstances I could have prevented, it was on my head, not nature’s.
BACK IN THE PADDOCK, ROSE STIFFENED, THEN TORE UP THE slope and picked something up off the ground. I recognized it: the afterbirth, part of it on the ground, some still smeared on the ewe, who was licking a tiny brown lamb. Our first. I wanted to rush over for a closer look, but I held Rose back in a lie-down and waited for ten anxious minutes.
When I thought the baby was mostly dry, I released Rose, who trotted over and gently sniffed the wobbly little creature. The mother got nervous, and I was about to take Rose out of the paddock, but remembering my ideas about trusting this dog, I let her stay. She sat fifteen feet away, so still I almost forgot she was there.
I was excited. Lambs are intrinsically cute, and this one—I named it Jane—was adorable. But I was more surprised and impressed by the mother. I’d sometimes written off my sheep as a bunch of crowd-following grazers, but this mom was impressive, keeping a wary eye on me and on Rose, alert for any danger. She made an affectionate clucking sound I hadn’t heard before as she methodically licked every inch of Jane.
I approached slowly, carefully picked up the shivering lamb, and placed her in the sling. She was still slippery, and it was difficult to position her hooves properly, even harder to get her to hold still. But I held her in front of her mama and began walking backward down the muddy slope. I had to leave the flashlight behind, so I was feeling my way in the moonlight.
The ewe followed me down the slope, around some trees, alongside the artesian well. It took a while for our little procession to reach safety. Whenever the ewe wandered or strayed—she lost track of her lamb several times—I had to clamber back up and hold the sling in front of her nose. When we finally got to the barn, I set the lamb in a stall, slipped off the sling, slid down th
e gate, and turned on the heat lamp.
I gave the pair a clump of hay (called a “leaf”) and a bucket of fresh water, which the ewe drank hungrily, alternating gulps between lamb-cleaning. I got my special scissors, held the lamb up—the mother circled in alarm—and snipped the umbilical cord, then sprayed the spot with disinfectant. Rose had slipped in quietly to watch; the ewe didn’t seem to mind.
Jane had tightly curled fleece in a warm cinnamon color that would fade to cream with age, and a white blaze on her head. She had a high-pitched bleat that, to her mother, would always distinguish her from the others. And she quickly found a teat and began nursing, her tail wiggling frantically—a sign that milk was being consumed.
This wasn’t so bad.
Rose and I were both transfixed—but also weary. We left the pair in the barn and went inside to rest up for the next round.
I CHECKED THE PADDOCK SEVERAL TIMES A DAY, BUT THE weather was so cold—nights still in the single digits and wind chills below zero, even in mid-March—that I set my alarm clock to ring every two or three hours during the night as well. I kept my jeans and jacket and boots by the bed so I could yank them on fast and dash out on patrol with Rose and a flashlight. I soon came to understand the concept of sleep deprivation as torture. In the daytime I became useless—irritable, exhausted, grimy. After the first few nights I simply slept in my clothes, like a fireman; all I had to do was pull on my boots.
The next birth was more complicated. I came into the paddock early one morning—weren’t any of these ewes going to deliver in daylight?—and noticed a ewe near the fence, obviously in labor. She stomped and groaned until 5:30, but this time, I wasn’t about to miss the moment of birth. I saw her water break, bursting from the dangling sac, followed by a gooey brown mass that slid to the ground, coughed, and started to move. I saw that membranes covered the lamb’s mouth and, using my plastic surgical gloves, wiped them away. The lamb gurgled, baahed, and struggled to its feet; the mother began licking.
That was when I messed up. I went into the house to fetch my birthing supplies. It took no more than ten minutes—my fingers were so numb, I held them above the toaster oven to try to regain some feeling—before we returned to the paddock.
I climbed the hill, waited a few more minutes for the ewe to finish her licking, then maneuvered the baby into the sling. This was a diligent mother, but she seemed to lose her bearings easily. We went back and forth on the hill for what seemed forever, though it probably was no more than fifteen minutes. I called for help from Rose, who circled behind the ewe to get her moving. That focused her on the lamb, and the four of us found our way quickly into the barn and into the second stall. In the other one, Jane and her mom were thriving.
After cutting the cord and making sure the new pair had hay and water and heat, I went back into the paddock for a final look around before going back to bed. I was cold and sore—lambing was hard on my leg—and it was a long climb up to bed.
My heart lurched. Another lamb, clearly newborn, since it was tiny and wet, was bleating at a ewe that didn’t seem to mind or chase it away, but wasn’t being attentive, either. She wasn’t licking the baby, which made me suspicious. I shined my flashlight around and saw no traces of afterbirth. When I walked closer, the ewe simply moved away. For a new mother, she was awfully diffident.
Then it struck me: this was a twin. When I’d gone into the house for supplies, the ewe had given birth to another lamb. When I came back to the paddock and carried her firstborn away, she’d followed me, and we’d left this baby behind. Or perhaps it had simply wandered off, beyond the mother’s attention. I could see no other ewe in labor. This had to be a twin, and it was cold and alone, and therefore in trouble.
I was running out of time. I wrapped the lamb in a towel and with my other hand grabbed a handful of the afterbirth still on the ground; sometimes if you smeared it on the lamb the mother would connect with it. I rushed to the barn, sliding, falling once but keeping the lamb and afterbirth up out of the muck. Freezing, covered in mud and other stuff, I rushed into the barn and put the lamb into the pen. I took the first twin out so that the ewe would concentrate on this new one.
But she immediately butted the baby right into the pen wall, then charged at him again. Maybe if we tried Joanne’s fancy blue lambing pen: it had a separate compartment where newborns could go to be safe. I put both babies inside, then the ewe; she kept butting the second twin with great force whenever she could. The baby looked miserable, battered; he retreated into a corner just out of reach and lay down, shivering, while the other lamb crawled out and began nursing.
I tried smearing afterbirth on twin number two, pulling first one lamb and then the other out of the pen, so that the second baby could nurse and ignite the connection. Nothing helped. For two hours the ewe rejected her baby, until I realized this wasn’t going to work.
I named the poor guy Arthur and left him in his safe corner. I went into the kitchen, got out my lamb survival supplies, and called the vet while mixing up some milk replacement in a baby bottle. When I came back into the barn Arthur had given up on his mom and was huddled forlornly. He loved the bottle instantly.
I pulled out the lawn chair I’d bought the day before at the Salem Hardware Store, realizing I’d never survive standing for hours every night. I put a towel in my lap and sat down with Arthur and the bottle. He drank greedily.
It is impossible, I suspect, for anyone who loves animals not to bond with a newborn lamb that’s curled up against you, drawing sustenance from the bottle you’re giving him. I could feel Arthur’s heart thumping as he gulped. I told him how sorry I was that I’d screwed up his first hours and promised to take care of him.
In the morning Dr. Amanda came from Granville—we’d gotten to know each other well by now—and said the mother and twins were doing fine. Arthur was thin, but if he was taking the bottle, he might make it. He would have a rough time when he was released into the flock; the other mothers would butt and kick him. He would survive, if he could, by grabbing the occasional passing nipple and learning to eat grass and grain early. Without real mother’s milk, he might never be as robust and disease-resistant as the others, but he had a decent shot.
“Arthur thinks you are his mom,” the vet told me. And, true, he baahed furiously at the sight of me. But the lamb was nothing like a puppy, able to drowse in his human’s presence. He was all instinct and drive, all about food, battling relentlessly for every drop of milk. It was curious to see the instincts nature gave these creatures to help them survive.
Every three or four hours Rose and I came out into the barn and I sat down in the chair with Arthur while he scarfed down half a bottle. I usually also brought a cup or two of oats for Carol and Fanny, who were getting fewer snacks and less attention than normal but accepted lambing season with their usual equanimity. Those cold nights in the pasture were considerably warmer for the presence of Carol or Fanny, who stood alongside me, nudging my pocket for cookies or presenting their heads for scratching. They took in the lambing drama the way they took in everything, with their soulful eyes and calm manners.
The morning after Arthur’s birth, the sheep named Paula was standing matter-of-factly in the pasture at five A.M. with a big brown bruiser of a newborn ram alongside her. She’d handled the whole business efficiently in the few hours since I’d last checked. Her lamb, twice the size of the others, ran right up to me and Rose. I named him Brutus. Paula, like her namesake, was a great mom, attentive and affectionate.
I wished my own Paula were here, but she’d been traveling for work and wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another week. Meanwhile the house was a shambles, dirty dishes piling up in the sink, syringes and bottles all over the kitchen and pantry, dust and caked dirt and sprigs of hay all over the floor. I’d had no time for laundry or shopping and was wolfing down frozen dinners, stale bread, and an occasional apple or slice of cheese. The lambs were eating more nutritiously than I was.
By the second day of nursing, Arth
ur and I had bonded. He was a fighter; his determination was appealing. I kept him near his mother in case she had a change of heart, and he had grown adept at darting into her pen, trying to grab a drink, then retreating into his safe corner. He looked miserable whenever the ewe butted him, and watched silently as his sister nursed. But I thought he was gaining weight.
Tired as I was, I looked forward to pulling the lawn chair out, sitting with the lamb on my lap, donkeys hovering nearby and Rose sniffing around. A few times I brought Orson out on a leash to inspect the new arrivals. I didn’t especially like the way he eyed the lambs, particularly defenseless Arthur, but it was neat to have him be part of the season.
Rose was growing more comfortable by the day with our expanding cadre of lambs, but a new problem had arisen. The same ewes she’d been happily pushing around for months had suddenly become monsters, hissing, kicking, and butting whenever she came near. Rose was shocked, yelping in surprise and retreating. Conventional herding-dog wisdom dictated that she shouldn’t be there at all, but she was my partner in all things sheep. I watched in fascination as she sat next to me and studied these newly aggressive creatures as they ate and nursed.
I had no doubt she would approach the matter with the same resolve and ingenuity that she brought to the rest of her work, but for now, she was stymied. That was fine; it wouldn’t hurt for her to respect her charges a bit more.
On the third night, I saw Arthur weaken a bit. He was cold, shivering; he didn’t baah when I entered the barn. At a shepherd friend’s suggestion, I’d tried smearing the afterbirth from another ewe on him and tried to slip him in with her as a fake twin. That didn’t work. I tried him with Paula and her brute in the lambing pen; she rammed him full force against the plywood wall. So I put him back with his mom, cursing her indifference and my own carelessness.
The next day, I came outside at six A.M. with Arthur’s morning bottle. He was subdued, but gamely took two or three gulps of milk. Then, as I held him, I actually felt his heart stop. His head tilted off to one side. I’d lost him.