Every Lamb Matters

On our farm every animal is important to us. We do all we can to raise each animal humanely and care for them to the best of our ability. We were tested on Friday night when we went out to check the sheep and found that one had lambed twins. One lamb was up and moving while the other was still on the ground. We rushed in and found the lamb was half frozen and barely alive.  He was quickly moved to the house and plopped on the kitchen island to be wrapped up and assessed. 

We knew he was hypothermic and needed his temperature brought up slowly. A lambs temperature should be between 101-103 degrees Fahrenheit. We tried to take his temperature and the only reading it gave was “low”, not good. Meanwhile, Harry brought the ewe and other lamb into the lambing facility to be contained and warm up a little. 

We spent the next several hours rubbing the lamb with towels and keeping him close to try and warm him up slowly. We wanted to get him warm and then try to give him back to his mother.  

Eventually we moved him to the bed so he could snuggle up with Maggie, who was incredibly patient. Harry went back out to check on the ewe and other lamb and discovered that she had another baby, triplets!  

Eventually we decided that he wasn’t warming fast enough. We drug out the little dog crate and stuck him in there with a heater blowing on him. Finally his temperature was rising and we got a reading on the thermometer, 90.5! Not warm enough but at least we got a reading! He stayed in front of the heater for about 30 minutes until he was warm. We were able to get some milk in him by tubing him and then we knew he would survive one way or the other. Harry tried taking him back out to mom. She wanted to take him but he was not aggressive enough to get to her milk and eat.  The ewe was also having a hard time keeping track of three babies. So we brought him back inside, gave him more milk by a tube, and he spent the night in our bedroom in the dog crate. 

Saturday morning we got up at 5 to check the ewes and found that another one had lambed! We brought her and the lamb in the lambing facility and decided she looked like she could handle two and we wanted to try and give her Vince (the frozen lamb from Friday night.) We brought him out and she seemed to take to him alright. He still was not aggressive at getting to the milk but figured he would pick it up when he got hungry and instincts kicked in.  

We left him with his new adoptive mother to finish the rest of morning chores and when we came back we found that the ewe had another lamb, twins with Vince being the third. She looked like she could handle all three so we decided to keep him in there. Throughout the day we tried to help him suck from mom and kept him fed by milking mom and tubing Vince. Toward the end of the night he finally started sucking my finger and was able to take a bottle. Later on the ewe got tired of us messing with her and she decided she just wanted to take care of her two babies and started hitting Vince away. Back inside he went and became a bottle baby. 

Now, we love all the lambs, but bottle babies are a pain. They need more of our attention and never grow as big as the lambs raised by their mothers. Luckily, we have an outlet for our bottle babies where they are well cared for and loved!  

We reached out to Jaci, a thirteen year old young lady who absolutely loves animals, to see if she would take Vince. She was over the moon with the thought of taking another one of our bottle babies (she took the one we had last April as well.)  

We fed Vince and kept him in the house until Jaci could pick him up on Monday afternoon. Vince got to snuggle up with a hippo in his crate and even spent some time running around in a makeshift diaper.  

Jaci picked up Duncan (formerly Vince) and was all too excited to take him home. She aspires to be a vet one day because she loves caring for animals and seeing them happy.

Her favorite part of caring for the lambs is feeding time and getting to see them happy and excited. Her least favorite part of caring for the lambs is cleaning up their messes. We are so thankful for Jaci and hopes she enjoys her new lamb!