At the border

At the border between sleep and waking, my mind plays with itself, frets, plan,s and worries. Some of the worries are ludicrous. Did I finish my homework for algebra? (Who knows – it was all irrelevant 50 years ago.) Will Simon like his birthday present? (Probably not as much as I enjoyed making it, but that’s okay.) Will my Muslim friends be safe? (I don’t know – all I can do is write letters and make phone calls to congressmen.) Do we have new lambs in the barn? Do we have new lambs that need help? Finally something I can actually affect.  But not by worrying. 

Most of the ewes are wandering around the pasture in the light of a half moon. I hear the lambs before I reach the barn. Inside I find two lambs being mothered by two moms. One lamb is up and trying to nurse, the other lies unlicked against a cold block wall. Our first two lambs! A joy and a possible problem.

I grab the step stool off the wall and unhook a heat lamp from the nail near the ceiling. I plug in the lamp over a jug and then go to get the lambs. The black ewe with the lamb who is nursing has amniotic fluid running down her udder.  The white ewe with the quiescent lamb shows no physical signs of having given birth. She has stolen a lamb. I pick up the quiet lamb, clutch it to my chest and then pick up the active lamb. Both ewes weave back and forth around me trying to stay close to their lamb. I open the door to the jug and lay the lambs under the heat lamp. Then I step back holding myself between the white ewe and the lambs, giving the real mother, number 27 orange, a chance to blunder into the pen. Then I shut the panel and tie the pen closed. Both lambs baaa.

Number 27 orange mutters, sniffs the lambs, and begins licking the quiet one. Satisfied, I retrieve a knife, several towels and Iodine from the barn cabinet. First I pick up the quiet lamb, hold her in my lap and dry her white curls then I cut her umbilical cord to about an inch and dip it in iodine. I place her in front of Orange 27 and dry off and dip the second lamb, a little boy who struggles to get out of my lap and return to his nursing.  The little girl still isn’t standing. I touch her nose. Cold. She probably hasn’t nursed yet. I express some of 27 orange’s milk into a cup and dribble it into the lamb’s mouth. She doesn’t even swallow. 

I dash back to the house, grab 60 cc gavage syringe, a short piece of plastic tubing and a thermometer. Back in the barn I fill the syringe with fresh milk expressed from 27 orange, slip the plastic tube into the lambs mouth, down its throat and then slowly squirt life giving warm milk into the lambs stomach. I slip the thermometer into the lamb’s rectum. The little red line stops at 97°. Too cold. A lamb should be between 102 and 104°.

I hurry back to the house for a bucket of hot water and meet Dave on the way out to find me. He gets the water, I return to the barn to feed and water 27 orange. Then I set up a new jug for the next family of new lambs.

Dave returns with hot water. He submerges the cold lamb up to her neck and we wait until she struggles to get out of the bucket, a good sign that her body temperature is up to normal - 102°. We dry her off with towels and a hair dryer. Then we feed her another two ounces of milk. She’s standing, her belly feels full, and no one else seems to be lambing. We return to the house and bed.

At the border between wake and sleep, my mind wrestles with itself. Sheep okay? Just checked. Grandchildren okay? Talked to them this evening.  Politics? Oh, that’s a hard one. But in the morning, after my first cup of Earl Grey tea, I’ll make some phone calls and share my worries –

White House switchboard 202- 456-1111

Congressional switchboard 202-224-3121

The switchboards have been overwhelmed with calls. If you can’t get through, try an email. Go to your Representative or Senators web page. It should give you an email address.

Cold lamb

"I always slow down when I get to the barn door," I explained to Abi as we walked toward the barn. "If the ewe is a first time Mom and is frightened or if she's have a hard delivery and she's anxious, I don't want to scare her out of the barn. It's much easier on her babies to be in the barn in this cold."

21 orange was neither frightened nor anxious. She stood just inside the door, a gangly white lamb standing beside her. 21 orange licked her lamb. The lamb shuddered.

Cold lamb! Not surprising, it was still below zero outside.

I grabbed a couple of towels from the cabinet and handed them to Abi,  then  hung a heat lamp over a pen and turned on the light. I untied the corner ties on the front panel of the pen and fluffed up the straw on the floor. Then I picked up the new lamb and carried it to the pen. I walked slowly, backwards, holding the lamb down for 21 orange to sniff and follow. "Come on Mom," I murmured. "We'll get you into a nice warm pen."

21 orange is an old ewe; she knew the routine. When I set her baby down and moved away, she walked right into the pen and began licking him again. I gestured Abi in after him. "Dry him off with the towel." Once the lamb was dry, I cut his umbilical cord and dipped it in iodine. Then I stripped milk from his mother's teats. Abi filled a bucket with water and hung it on the pen wall. I added a slice of hay.The lamb was still shivering, so we hung a second heat lamp.

When we returned with the barn to introduce Dave to our newest addition, the lamb was still shivering.  I ran back to the house for a thermometer and a lamb bottle. Dave milked 21 orange into a jar while I took the lamb's temperature. Normal. The shivering was probably due to the cold, not to an inability to keep his temperature up, a problem that has haunted us for several years. If we could get him nursing, he'd be fine.

Dave put the lamb onto his mother's nipple, holding mom in place with his shoulder and the lamb in place with his hands and knees. The lamb sucked a little, but got distracted easily. Finally, Abi poured the fresh milk into the bottle and held the lamb while I fed him. He nursed well. When we left the barn his shivers were almost gone.