A week ago Saturday was the official end of lambing, though no one apparently told the ewes. On Tuesday, ANZAC day, I found Zac, apparently disdained by his birth mother in favour of the other twin. I did my best to get them back together in the paddock. Zac was willing, but mama was not. Zac is now my baby--or more accurately, I'm his mama--a relationship that will continue as long as both of us are alive.
That's Zac lying down at the top of the flock, behind a grass tussock. I paraded the whole lot of them past him, and no one claimed him.
Zac is living on my back porch at the moment, rather than in the special pen for bottle lambs down in the back of the woolshed. This is mostly to make it easier for me keep the bottles up to him and also to spend time with him, as a proper mother would. Not that I'm a proper mother, more like the suitcase of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest".
This isn't Zac--it was a simultaneous emergency. While I was watching to see if Zac's mama was going to step up, I heard another lamb calling from well behind me. He was stuck on the wrong side of a fence, so I doubled back to get him out the gate, mercifully nearby. He knows his mama is right up there calling him. The other emergency that happened in this same 40 minutes was spotting a fly-struck ewe. It's been 8 weeks since I jetted, and the weather has been incredibly mild--no serious frosts, even, so we're still at risk of flystrike. Happily, I managed to get her into the yards and treated, without much drama (after taking Zac home and getting him settled).
Nevertheless, after a rocky few hours at the start, Zac is thriving. He's getting lactose-free milk mixed with a tiny bit of cream and egg, and a dose of probiotic (Protexin) each day. When he's a bit older, I'll bring Clara and Vicki down to keep him company in the lamb paddock behind the shed. Till then, it's Zac and me--eating, walking, playing and sleeping. It's lovely spending this much time with a young lamb, something I've never done before.
Zac's first selfie, earlier today.