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| Sheep deliveries! |
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| This Momma ewe went into labor about lunch time Saturday. First lamb came out okay. A little later, the second one came out, but Momma sat down on it. About supper time I noticed she was still laying on the ground in the corral instead of out in the pasture eating grass and feeding her babies. I walked to the corral and discovered that there was another set of legs hanging out! Not good after several hours, and with the wrong legs (back ones) showing. I pulled out the cell phone and told the Midwife she was needed in the emergency sheep room - Stat! I needed a set of small hands for this job. |
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| I had the Momma herded into our capture pen by the time the Midwife arrived, and she immediately pushed the legs back inside the Momma. She was having a hard time turning the lamb around, so I told her to just pull it out, because it was probably dead anyway, and I wanted to save the Momma. So she pulled... |
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| ...and pulled... |
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| ...and kept pulling, until she got it out. "It" turned out to be ram number 3 for this Momma ewe. Triplets! And the Midwife was pleasantly surprised to find out that you can pull a lamb out the wrong way and it can still survive! I was very surprised this lamb was alive. |
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| The poor Momma was totally exhausted, and couldn't move. I had to raise her head. The Midwife was lamenting she had no antibiotics to give the ewe. I said."Why?" She said, "Because I had my hands inside of her." I replied, "Don't worry, you had your sterile gloves on. Besides, I'm more worried now about you handling my supper. Go scrub." |
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| We left her with her 3 sons, and headed in for supper. I returned after eating to find that Momma and a son (the one on far right) were gone, but the two other little guys were laying in the corral shivering in the cooling night breeze - the third guy still soaking wet from his birth. We had to rescue them again. |
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| We have a little experience with bottle feeding new born lambs, so our front bathroom is again a nursery for little white fur balls. The Midwife put them in the bath tub for a quick wash, then got out her hair dryer while I went looking for the bag of powered colostrum left over from Sparky's baby days - just last month. I'm back on night watch with feedings every 4 hours. I used to think having triplets would be great for the farm's profit margin, but I'm having second thoughts. |
WOW! Your Wanch has just been full of exciting events . . . I'm glad that the baby was okay and that everything went well : )
ReplyDeleteGreat to have a midwife around! Infection without antibiotics often occurs, tho, as even with gloves (altho the long OB gloves help) on, bacteria foreign to the body can enter. We would much prefer twins to triplets, as often lamb number 3 or 4 gets the short end of the mom having just two nipples. I'm told that if one lamb starts to fail via not getting enough milk, you take the STRONGEST one off the mom and bottle feed it, and let the weaker one have mom. That doesn't always work either, tho, sadly.
ReplyDeleteIn that case we are grateful that nature takes her course and keeps the best babies, for our flocks and herds. Heroics come into play when delivering mal-presented babies, but otherwise, it's survival of the fittest on our place.
All that said, our friend Sally has a goat that routinely has quint- or sextuplets! Her last round, 5 kids survived out of what I call a "litter" of goats!
I should say USUALLY we don't go to heroics!
DeleteThat really was exciting!
ReplyDelete