Mates,

With football over and basketball dead in the water, OT season is basically here.  A number of you have visited the farm and hopefully more will do so in the years to come, but in the meantime maybe some would be interested in real-life time on the farm.  I wish I could have video of various parts of this and make it a UFR, but a word picture is the best I can do right now.

The topic today is 'lambing'.  Lambing is the term farmers use when their ewes (mama sheep) give birth to lambs.   We raise cattle, sheep and chickens (for meat and eggs) on the farm.  Sheep typically give birth in spring, sometimes as early as February but usually in March.  Except this year, when we've had two sets of twins born this month.   That is not optimal with temps below zero and life for them is pretty fragile.   But let's start at the beginning. 

Will She Stand for Him?

That is indeed the question.  You see, when livestock are in season, meaning, when they are ready to mate the female will do what's called 'standing' for her paramour.  If she's not with young ones herself, she'll usually be receptive to the male's advances.    This phenomenon also has the effect of getting any farmer off the hook for explaining the 'birds and the bees' to their own children.   You see, the kids can figure out what's going on out in the pastures and pretty soon they don't even ask, 'Daddy, why is Lucky on Charm's back like that?'.  They know how babies are made.  For sheep, the usual cycle is 153 days of gestation.  One problem though is that sheep don't tell you when they're pregnant and when you do finally notice they're getting a little wide, you still have no clue about a due date. 

How'd You Like to be Freshened?

As a farmer of livestock it is a goal to have your herd/flock expand.  Sometimes you want to mix bloodlines or produce more to sell or harvest.  In farmer lingo when you are trying to have matings happen you simply say about your cow/ewe/doe for instance, "It's time to have [*cute name for livestock] freshened, we should call the Browns and borrow their bull/ram/buck for a few weeks", or something like that.   If you lived in a farming community though, you might get some additional mileage out of this phrase.  You could mention to your dear wife, 'Hey sweetheart, how'd you like to be freshened?'.    I know, sounds like a slick line in a serious romance movie, but you heard it here first.   If you're really sophisticated, maybe go full wolf-whistle and yell something like, "Hubba, hubba, baby, let's get freshened!'  Could get you slapped.  Either way, for those brave enough to try it out please discretely post your results.   And yes, if I was a master magician writer like Seth/Brian/Alex, I'd have some clever, "Worry if..." and "Cackle with knowing glee when...", but decorum prohibits me from going too far on over that bridge.   Suffice it to say that our ram is home-grown, mellow/safe to be around (many are not), and he is doing his freshening job like a champ.

*When your kids are little they will name the animals.   Years ago we had a slew of names for one group of sheep that went like this:  Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Bennie and Chuck.  Go figure.   The cattle names have been dandies, too.

Lambing in Winter - Is Your Ram Draft-worthy?

This is the more serious part, and why I'm up late and early.  It's the part of farming that is not so fun and is a lot like work.  To the point, we've had two complete surprise sets of twins drop this last week of January, the second set yesterday morning at about 0400 hrs.  Unfortunately, that birth overlaps with sub-zero cold up here and survival is not guaranteed for these lambs.  Anyway, I walk into the barn at 0-dark-hundred and I hear a pretty high-pitched bleating and I think that the new week old twins haven't been making a lot of sound so that perks your ears up.  Except that I almost instantly figure out that the week old twins are with their mom in a different stall and are resting quietly and comfortably, and the bleats I hear are coming from a different stall that is chock-full of sheep.   I quickly realize we have some super-new-new lambs and they are in a bigger pen with other sheep.   These lambs are maybe an hour old.  Time for action.

First, you do some sheep sorting.  Sorting is the dividing and usually sending into one pasture/trailer/barn or another some sub-group of your livestock.  Sorting cattle can be pretty exhilarating at times and you need to be very careful because you are basically herding cattle but you're not on a horse or in an ATV so if it gets bad you've got nowhere to hide.  Sorting sheep isn't dangerous like that (though you need to be paying attention), but sheep are so skittish and dumb, they make cows look like PhD candidates and I have to make sure the hour-old lambs aren't stampeded.  

I get all of the big sheep out to the pasture and get the newest twins and their mama in the barn in their own stall.  Temperature is a big problem and makes you want to take them inside, but it cuts against the definite and natural need of the mama and the babies to be together so that mama's milk drops and they bond with one another.   Another complication is that since this particular ewe never told me she was expecting we haven't sheared her wool since last summer and she is a mess down where her 'bag' (think: a sheep's udder/teets) is, covered with wool and stringers of ice, snow and some other less desirable things.  So, I run up to the house, grab a couple of the boys and we head back to the barn with shears.  I put the grab on mama and put her on her back and the boys carefully trim that junk off of her so the lambs will be able to find the teets.  

Second, you have to hope that the ewe's milk 'comes in'.  Not really any different than a nursing mother for us humankind, but for animals it is particularly dramatic how their bag will be nothing at all and soon after birth, boom, the milkman arrives.  This mother is doing well being concerned for her babies, but her milk isn't coming in very quickly probably at least in part due to the extreme cold.  Finally, some milk does flow and we do our best to put the lambs on the teets and get that process started.   But I need to go to work and the kids to school, so now it's mom's turn. 

Dear wife is an excellent farm-mother and she doesn't hesitate to get involved.  We are concerned that the lambs aren't getting enough milk from their mom so wife gets to a farm store and get some formula.  We've had to do this from time to time in past years with calves and kids (goat babies, not ours), but this is the first time for sheep.  Mrs. XM spends much of the day in the barn feeding the twins and/or making sure they get on mom, and making sure they're warm enough. However, as the day goes on one of the twins, the gray male, seems to not be functioning as well as the other.   It comes to the point that we turn our laundry room into a nursery for that lamb since the barn is single digit temps and the house is about 60 degrees warmer than that.  We lay that lamb down in blankets, try to get him to nurse on some formula, but he's not taking much.  I check just before midnight and he's under the blanket, seeming sleeping normally but there's really no way to know for certain.

This morning I can't sleep and at about 0330 my mental alarm goes off and I go check on our newest arrivals.  The lamb in the barn, with her ewe-mom, is doing fine.  However, the gray male in our laundry room is not.  In fact in the last 4 hours he has declined to the point of barely showing signs of life.  I carefully pick him up and take him to the barn and place him next to his sister, who is laying next to the mom.  The sister gently nuzzles him with her nose, as does mom.  And sister places her head on his hip. 

In virtually all sporting events, you can be prepared, experienced, and give it your all and still you don't win every game.  When we played TCU 4 weeks ago we were ready.  We had talent, experienced and excellent coaching, and plenty of time to prepare.  Yet, we all know the outcome of that game.  That of course happens in life, too.   And it happens on farms.  I remember one still-birth for a sheep, probably a decade or more ago, but I don't remember ever losing a new-born.  That said, we've never had a calf/lamb/kid born in the dead of winter when it was literally 0 degrees outside, and -10 with windchill.  I eventually come up from the barn but as our high schoolers were heading in for an early-morning workout I ask them to check on the lambs one last time, fairly certain of the report.   And despite decades of experience, proper methods and means, and great effort, we lost this one, we lost that little gray male lamb.  I am reminded of the scene in Ground Hog Day when Bill Murray keeps trying to save the homeless guy but it doesn't work, and the nurse tells him words to the effect of, "Sometimes, people just die".    And that holds true for livestock, too.   You can have all the care and tools you need, but providence overrules it all.

I don't wake my wife up to share this news, but when she does wake up that's the first question she asks.  I tell her the barn lamb is fine.  She asks, what about the one in the laundry room?  I shake my head, 'no'.   And she asks about how I found him and the details of what happened.  I explain the best I can, but ultimately she cries a bit and says, "But I was holding him, warming him and feeding him all day yesterday.  How could he die?"  If you've never held a newly born lamb, they really are one of the most sweet, gentle, harmless and defenseless creatures on God's green earth.  They are about the size of a very lean cat, but with double-long and thick legs.   Lambs, like all of us, don't come with guarantees or warranties.  You can't get them back to life if they don't make it.  And nobody is going to perform an autopsy to see if it was a heart issue, or lungs, or intestines, or cold or some combination of those.   You just have to accept the fact that 'sometimes, your livestock just dies'. 

So far, the sister lamb continues going strong and every hour she's alive her chances of surviving go up.  The other set of twin lambs is now 8 days old and as frisky as they could possibly be.   We have more significant cold coming at the end of the week but if all goes well, we'll be past the danger point where life is so fragile.   Our ram has had all but one of his draft choices work out very well.  A pretty good grade, all things considered.   Here's to having more drafts to grade and hopefully not lamenting too much the one or two that don't work out.

XM