Tag Archives: adoption

animal psychology, Babies, Humour, Lambing, Sheep, Welsh culture

When is a sheep not a sheep?

Years ago, long before we knew anything about sheep, fate presented us with an orphan lamb.

1010452

Here she is, still nameless and rather thin, at the foot of her ailing mother.  Our subsequent experience “bringing up Aby” (that is her name) forms the basis for some of my recent book, Iolo’s Revenge.

I don’t want to spoil the book for you but can tell you that it was a very steep learning curve and taught us a great deal that we had not previously realized about bonding, despite having five children!

And it’s not just humans that are suckers for baby things!  Here is Pedro our tough and, then, sometimes wilful, dog (who would kill an adult rat or rabbit in a trice) cleaning up Aby with puppy love.

1010454

Here she is a few weeks later and a lot more confident.

1010456

Queen of her domain.

She has had ten lambs of her own now, always helped into the world by yours truly, (though they never really needed it).  She would always lie as close as she could to the kitchen door and call for her private midwife.  She would make a terrible fuss if I went in for a cup of coffee or a call of nature and when the lamb was almost out I would gently help and present it to Aby.  It reminded me of a cat we used to have who would not have her kittens unless my dad was standing by with sterilized nail scissors.

I’ll save you the slippery, slimy pictures.  All cleaned up next day –note the number one –that’s Mum’s number — she was, after all, our first.

1526413_10154092750365500_1241585118270481457_n

Last October we sold our breeding flock and Aby has retired.  She runs with the new flock that graze our land.

Last week they were to be moved to the farthest field, beyond the woodland.  Now when sheep are faced with a scary predator their instinct is to flock together.  Aby took one look at the enthusiastic sheep dog, a Huntaway bitch, that had come to do the job and she peeled off from the flock and hurtled (she doesn’t hurtle often) towards the sound of Alan’s voice.  She hid with him in the orchard until the job was done and when shepherd and dog came back to the house Aby was standing with Alan in the garden still absolutely confident that when people say “sheep”, they don’t mean her.

She stayed in the garden all night, eating forsythia to which she is rather partial and which had only just recovered from its last assault, and I walked her up to join the other sheep in the morning which she did quite happily but in her own time.

SONY DSC

Standard
animal psychology, Hill Farming, Lambing

Snatched within minutes of birth!

What a tragedy when a baby is taken from its mother…  But spare a thought for the perpetrator — sometimes they are victims too!

Two new lambs are born before dawn, they are lying with their new mother under the hedge — both healthy.  Above the hedge I spot another ewe so, before marking the new lambs, I go to check the other ewe.  She is licking the ground and chewing on membranes in the grass; from her rear dangles other membranes and her large udder is streaked with blood — she has obviously just given birth, but there were no lambs.

I hunt up and down behind the hedge — there is no trace. Several neighbours have been troubled by a predator this year.

Damn!  Damn!  I should have been up earlier — That damned fox has had a new born lamb…

Unless…  Something in the manner of the ewe with the two lambs, below the hedge, had not been quite right — as I approached her she had looked excited, not wary, she had given me that Oh-good-time-for-breakfast-look.  Sheep that have just delivered usually have more on their minds.

I rapidly fashion a pen out of hurdles and lift the new lambs into it then let the new mother in and examine her pristine rear — it is clean and dry, she has stolen these lambs.  More accurately she has kindly fostered them after they rolled through the hedge, probably because of over-enthusiastic cleaning by their old mum.

I return the lambs to number 1 mum who looks doubtful.  She smells the first lamb and nuzzles it but pushes the other gently  away, it rolls through the hole in the hedge and bleats.  Foster mother screams from the pen and tries to jump out, collapsing the whole caboodle.  The lamb rushes to her and suckles.

Plan B — I carry the lamb down the not inconsiderable hill (up and down which I have now been running for some time) The foster ewe follows me complaining and I shut her in a more substantial pen, then re-patriate the lamb, which is surprisingly vigorous, with its real mother.  ‘Not mine!’ says the real mother and knocks it over.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘No it isn’t  — look!’ she’s pushed it through the hedge and it’s running amok, bleating and several of the other ewes are coming up to investigate, including Number 19 who was involved in a custody battle a couple of years ago.

‘I think it might be mine,’ says Number 19,’ I do vaguely remember giving birth,’ she sniffs it, ‘Yes! It’s definitely mine!’

That’s it!  I’ve had enough — I bundle the troublesome lamb over the fence, reunite it with it’s real mother and sister and then we painstakingly  walk them, with much arguing and to-ing and fro-ing, the long way round to the barn where I shut up mother and both lambs in a small pen.

After such a long and tiresome walk so soon after giving birth on the frosty hillside where it is now raining, the sight of a warm, dry pen and a bucket of feed persuades the mother to concede, ‘Alright they both might be mine, but I still don’t like the look of that big one very much!’

She has now fed both lambs and Alan has bought me a cup of coffee, but still the cries of injustice from the kind, obliging foster mum can be heard — I hope she has her own lambs soon.

And to reassure any farmers reading this, just to be absolutely sure, I go and find the placentas and they were both above the hedge.

SONY DSC

The following morning things are not looking good.  The mother is butting the larger lamb who is starting to look wary of her.

‘Smell her,’ says the mother, she’s not mine!’

I sniff  her — she smell terrible, like a dog that’s rolled in rotting fox-pooh.  I sniff the little one — she smell all lamby and nice.

So, while waiting for a friend to bring us a lamb-adopter, I wash the offensive creature with clean warm water — she doesn’t like it much, then I dry her with kitchen towel and finish her off with her sister’s woolly back, then we exercise the human lamb-adopter who has come to investigate — he holds the ewe and the big hungry lamb has a feed and we squirt her with milk.  The mother is sniffing them both now and looking confused — hopefully she can’t count.  We withdraw and hope for the best.

Standard
Hill Farming, Sheep

Not a Dying Day

sheltering under the trees

sheltering under the trees

Torrential rain all night — sodden ground but not all that cold — not good lambing weather but ‘not a dying day’ the farmer said as we both looked out across the valley and, for a fleeting moment, the sun came out.

Disgruntled of Mid-Wales -- Horizontal ears -- Aby is not one to hide her emotions

Disgruntled of Mid-Wales — Horizontal ears — Aby is not one to hide her emotions

That was what we needed to hear.

Later in the day the rain abated and someone was baa-ing loudly up by the hedge.  Like humans some of our ewes labour stoically in silence, perhaps with the occasional muted grunt at the very end but some labour vociferously.  Number Twelve is a pretty young ewe, lively and highly strung, she shouts in labour.  Today she shouted that she was at the end of the first stage and I ran out with my binoculars to supervise — that is our arrangement.

They lamb out of doors but not in the laissez-faire, survival-of-the-fitest sense.  We watch and only intervene if they need it and if they need it there seems no problem in them accepting it — I guess it’s all in the timing but our days of chasing the two-headed sheep are hopefully over — that’s a sheep with its own head one end and its lamb’s head sticking out the other.

Ovine obstetrics makes me think of childbirth before the days of modern medicine when more deaths were caused by officious intervention (with dirty hands) than from the complications of birth.  We watch and the more we watch the better we grasp what is normal and what is usual for our individual animals and we do it quietly and from a distance.  Just like humans,  a relaxed and confident mother is the key to a happy outcome.

Here she is, first lamb -- shot from the cannon of her healthy young mother midst a salvo of baa-ing

Here she is, first lamb — shot from the cannon of her healthy young mother midst a salvo of baas.

Next came our friendliest ewe — I don’t know why she is so tame — she’s never been singled out for special treatment — not bottle fed and never ill.  She took herself off into the hedge, as they do, and silently produced a male lamb.

Friendly Sheep has an immense fleece (descendent of Square Sheep) and has thick wool all over her udders — she is perfectly adapted for life in a testing climate but her hirsutism presents a problem for her lamb — lambs are drawn to the teat by its smell and its heat — insulated teats are hard to find.

In the midst of this hunt while I am considering how to wax a sheep’ udder (ouch!) something else happens — something falls to the ground and rolls down the hill — it is a second lamb and the mother is completely unaware of it.  When it bleats she looks up for a moment then goes back to nosing her first.  Second Lamb shakes his nose free from the membranes with an extravagant gesture and bleats again — no response.

I pick up the lamb and clean its face with my hand then give it to the mother who looks pleasantly surprised and interested and she starts to lick it while I grab Number One Lamb and go hunting the teat.  I plug it in and beat a retreat.

Cleaning Second Lamb

Cleaning Second Lamb

By 10 o’clock at night, Second Lamb is teetering about the hillside, meters from its mum, bleating weakly.  I take it to its mother, ‘Not mine,’ she baas and gives it a gentle butt, then a not so gentle butt.

I try again, ‘Not mine — smell it!’

I do , it smells terrible, like something a dog might roll in which is what it must have done on another roll down the hill..

When my husband gets home from his Domino match, dropped off by a farmer friend he says to the friend, ‘Oh God — you know what’ll happen next — it’ll be in our wet-room.’

‘It is already!’

I tell him that I have prepared a pen in the shed and the friend offers us an adopter — a sort of anti-butting crate.  The next hour is spent slippy-sliding up and down the sodden hillside in the rain with Number One Lamb bleating in a bucket and Friendly Sheep following then panicking and running back up the field to something she couldn’t quite remember.

The other sheep are baaing their conflicting advice.  Eventually our old cade lamb, Aby, comes to the rescue and walks with us, Friendly Sheep was reassured and follows to the pen in the barn where we re-unite her with Second Lamb having warmed and dried it and given it a bottle of colostrum and washed its under the tap, dried it with hay and rubbed it on its big brother so that it smells more-or-less right.

Friendly Sheep settles immediately in the security of the shed, knows she has two lambs though she can’t count and is letting the now vigorous second lamb suckle.

Next morning they are a picture of domestic harmony.

?????????????????????????????

 

 

 

 

Standard