It doesn’t often come up in farming conversations, but my title is officially Dr. I’m not the useful sort of doctor, though — just an academic. In retrospect, I should have studied medicine, as I originally intended. Instead, my academic qualifications extend to explaining climate change, but are totally useless in the project that is about to take all of my time and energy for the next few weeks: lambing 33 ewes.
The paddock where they will lamb is a fabulous one for lambing: high energy density lucerne (alfalfa) in the lower reaches and shelter from virtually any wind direction in the upper part. It’s not a great paddock for the shepherd, though, as much of it I have to cover on foot — it’s too rough for the Polaris. All the gear in the photo will go into my backpack and I’ll be out there on foot every morning first thing, counting noses and making sure everyone is okay.
The mothers-to-be looking beautiful in the evening light.
This is the first time in six years that I’ve had lambs of my own. I had lots of good rationalisations for why it was a good idea to buy in lambs, but the truth is I chickened out. Lambing, like ageing, is not for the faint of heart. For my first 13 years of lambing, I had stockman Davey on the midwife front line — my main contributions to the process were my small hands, which can get in and turn a badly presented lamb without doing damage to the ewe, and care of bottle lambs. But Davey was the one who could spot a ewe in strife from a distance, despite being blind in one eye and without great vision in the other. He was a wizard at finding foster mothers and getting them to bond with orphans, and his calm, empathetic demeanor made the ewes believe him when he said, “I’m on your side, Dolly.” Dolly was his name for any sheep he was working with.
When Davey retired in 2013, I was solely responsible for a lambing flock of about 400 ewes, and although I got through it, I didn’t feel I did a good job. Even in the best of seasons, there is a high lamb mortality — at least it seems high to me — and I struggle emotionally to cope with the sadness and feeling that I should somehow have been able to do more to prevent those lambykins from dying.
Zac in his wooly jacket
In 2014 I made the decision not to sell my sheep for slaughter, which meant I only needed to replace the sheep who died of old age or illness — about 30 — each year. For the following three years I dodged lambing altogether, arguing to myself that the combination of dry conditions and no slaughter meant I didn’t need to add any numbers to the flock. In 2017, though, I had to stop fooling myself and start lambing again. I tried an experiment — autumn rather than spring lambing with about 50 ewes — and it didn’t go well. Zac was the one bottle lamb from 2017. In 2018 I tried again with a small flock, this time in spring, but my experiment of trying to give them better shelter to lamb in backfired, as there simply wasn’t enough feed near the shelter shed and so I had to keep moving the flock to better feed, risking mis-mothering. Freddie is the bottle lamb from 2018.
Freddie learning to eat the roses
At that point I started my rationalisations about why it would be a good idea, rather than a dodge, to buy lambs from my long-time friends and superfine merino farmers, Allan and Carol Phillips of Glen Stuart. They agreed to leave the tails on the babies and also to sell me all boys, as I had decided an all-wether flock would be easier to manage for fly strike. My plan was to buy in 50 or so wethers each year until 12 years later I would have my all-wether flock.
It won’t surprise you to know that bringing in lambs without their mothers to teach them their manners and how to eat well in our local environment was not an unqualified success. It wasn’t a disaster, but the flock dynamics were difficult for me, used as I was to a flock that stayed together and would follow me anywhere. It also took the adopted babies most of the first year to get their tummies fully adjusted to our grazing system. I bought lambs from Allan and Carol for three years. Then last year they decided to sell their farm and I decided it was time to put on my big girl pants and figure out how to do this in a way that worked for me, the ewes and the lambs. Which is where we are now.
Zac last year at age 5, carefully eating a scotch thistle blossom
Wonderful as Davey was as a stockman and shepherd, he was lousy at explaining how and why he did what he did. I had to go away to Low Stress Stock Handling school to learn what Davey knew in his bones about getting sheep to cooperate in the yards. And this year I needed to go to Lambing School so I could add to what I learned by watching Davey. Sadly for me, there is no Lambing School, but I did settle down to doing the research that would let me develop confidence in my care for the ewes and their soon-to-be-born progeny.
The main killers of pregnant and lactating ewes are pregnancy toxemia — also known as twin lamb disease — and hypocalcemia, aka milk fever. Both are treatable if caught early. Preg tox is a glucose deficiency brought on by the foetus using up more glucose than the ewe is taking in. The treatment is oral drench of a glucose solution. Milk fever results from a sudden drop in available calcium, and is treated by subcutaneous injection of substantial amounts of calcium solution. Instructions from Margaret the vet were, “Inject about 100ml (½ cup) of solution under the skin and then put your finger on the injection site to keep if from squirting back out.”
One of the tricky things is that preg tox and milk fever present with similar symptoms, principally total collapse of the animal. So the plan is to treat for preg tox first, as it is the more critical condition, then follow up with calcium. Magnesium deficit can also appear in late pregnancy, leading to a condition known as grass tentany, with symptoms more like staggers than collapse. See? I should have studied medicine.
Lambs can have a couple of problems on the way out of mom. Breech is the worst, as it’s quite hard to completely turn a lamb coming out backwards. Even when the lamb is coming out head first, sometimes its head is just too big and gets stuck in the birth canal. Caught in time, a ‘choked’ lamb can be saved; the challenge is convincing Dolly I’m on her side and she should let me catch her. Another danger is that twins can get tangled up trying to come out and have to be untangled, a challenge well-loved Yorkshire vet James Harriot relished, but one that always makes me nervous.
Once the lamb is out, has a drink and has been licked dry, he or she ‘will take a lot of killing’ as Davey used to say. Even horrible weather won’t kill a lamb who’s been able to get up and get a good drink, then curl up in the shelter of mom. Orphans or rejected lambs are a different story. They take a lot of care and attention, particularly in the first 48 hours. They need colostrum (which I keep in powdered form), a hydrating solution with glucose and then the slow introduction of milk. I’m a lot more confident with my bottle lamb skills as they’ve always been my responsibility, and I think I’ve made (and learned from) most of the mistakes it’s possible to make.
Wish me luck. I’ll keep you posted on progress.