Lickin’ Lambs
I’m not sure the cause, but I do know the net effect. It could be the renewal of new life or maybe it’s some suppressed maternal yearning that can never fully be completed, but whatever it is…. It’s magical. And….the consequence of performing the task of “lickin’ lambs” is that one’s heart grows exponentially, and since I’m a sheepless, shepherd, the only way to fill this void this year is to flip the pages of time back through some of the more memorable chapters in my history of lickin’ lambs.
** Side note - I’ll digress for a moment to explain what I mean by “lickin lambs.” It is a term used to describe the task of birthing sheep and successfully preparing a mother/ewe and her lambs for a life beyond the barn. By nature ewes lick their newborns to stimulate them and dry them off; the better the mother the more rigorous this activity, and the more quickly lambs get up to nurse etc. Thus a farmers task of “lickin lambs” translates to a crucial part of sheep rearing and the quality of care those first few hours or days give the ewe/lamb families (called pairs) the best chance at long term survival on their own. The task is multifaceted and takes on many forms from sorting by due date, assisting with a birth, to milking a ewe’s colostrum and supplementing her lambs. It’s a broad term with many applications.
The content that follows are short quibs and stories of mine in no particular order.
WITH TODDLERS:
All three of our kids spent much of their infancy and toddler years in the lambing barn. No babysitters. They were either strapped in a front pack to my chest, parked in their car seat under a heat lamp with the bum lambs, or roaming about the lambing barn with some semblance of a task in their hand whether it be handing me ear tags, bands, a tubing syringe or a warm bottle. We packed snacks, diapers and dry clothes, and I like to think of it as building their immunities. Our youngest, Sam was born March 3rd at the peak of spring lambing in Riddle, Oregon. We picked up Jake at noon from preschool and he spent half days at the barn, but things really took shape when Meg joined us at 3 o’clock after a day of first grade. She was as handy at lamb bottles as she was steadying a bottle for Sam as she passed his car seat in the alley.
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It was March 1994 and as I looked up I could see Meg's rainbow- striped stocking cap bop along the top rail of the alley as she walked toward me.
“Meg, where’s your brother?” I asked scanning the lambing barn.
She leaned around the corner, standing on one foot as she held onto the post with the clipboard in her free hand. She was dressed in Carhart coveralls and snowboots and her chilly pink fingers had shed her mittens that hung on a string from her jacket sleeves.
“Oh ….he’s just getting a drink,” she said.
I looked at snack box I’d packed in the Red Flyer wagon parked two pens down, but Jake wasnt there. Soooo I curiously scrunched up my face and looked back at her for clarification.
“Huh?” I questioned.
“Down there,” she said, as she nodded and pointed with the clipboard down the alley toward the bum (orphan) lambs’ pen.
And there he was…….there was my 15 month old toddler, in his snowsuit, squatted on his haunches, lips puckered, leaning in towards the nipples on the lambs’ bucket with a handful of bum lambs (a bucket with 8 nipples for orphan lambs to drink). I guess I should have packed more juice.
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A proud parent moment happened when Sam had just turned two and in the lambing barn he proclaimed, “look Mommy, Sammy share.” Well sure enough Sam was sharing a bottle with two bum lambs. One drink for Sammy, one drink for lamby. I’m convinced this is why my kids have such good immune systems.
BUMMERS:
If life is truly a bummer with regard to lambs than it’s pretty darn joyful and resilient. That’s right! “Bum or bummer lambs” are what we call the orphans or bottle babies in the lambing barn and they are a integral part of the lickin lamb management plan. El naturale’ is always the best way to go if you can. It’s alway better to have a lamb leave the barn with a momma ewe — whether adopted or natural.
In a perfect world a ewe leaves the barn with two suckling lambs — one for each of her God given faucets. First time moms get a pass and are encouraged to raise singles and focus on their maternal skills. There is a dual edged jeopardy when a mature ewe is sent to green lush pasture with only one lamb: first there’s excess and unused milk that could be utilized to nourish a lamb; and, secondly if milk production exceeds consumption there’s always a risk of mastitis (infection) and spoiling the udder.
We make use of any extra lambs to equalize the familalil population to two lambs. Those extras come from the bum pen which is a collection of triplets, weaker and rejected lambs and general “extras” that are available for adoption. The newer inductees are usually more easily adopted out as they more easily bond to the ewe and haven’t formed the pack bond with each other yet. There are other uses for bums too — some are real go getters can be used to milk out (by nursing) an over full udder and stimulate the maternal instinct in a ewe. Joe always said that bum lambs can “suck start a Harley”. They are scrappy and opportunists the longer they live as orphans and form a pack of their owns and become loyal to each other and the hand that feeds them— me/the shepherd.
Bums were always started on a bottle, but the eventual goal was to get them feeding on the milk bucket which is a homemade 8-nipple self feeder and much more efficient. They of course loved the individual hand feeding and nurturing, and I got so I could feed 8 bottles at once, but at some point the bucket became a necessity, and so much more efficient.
Some of my most joyful lambing memories come from watching the springs, bounce playfulness in the bum pen. I’d usually open the bum pen and let them race in the barn when we cleaned pens, and oh how they loved their freedom. The kids called it the lamb Olympics as the pack of bums would race down the alley amd spring up on the bail of hay at the end. It just takes one lamb to nod his head, bounce and take off down the alley with two sideways bounces around the feed tub to change a long hard day into sunshine.
BREAKFAST MUST WAIT
March 1995 came and went like a lion with snow rain and sleet and the days between the first and 31st were much the same. The only lambs of March had nothing to do with weather, but were the many many cold ones born at our place. Every morning I cringed at the thought of those tiny lambs making their debut in such harsh elements. Barn or not, below freezing is just that and there’s only so much licking a ewe can do especially if she has twins or triplets. Lambs were often pried off the frozen ground and brought to the house for triage and revival.
The morning routine was Joe got up at 2 am to do the calving barn checks at the ranch and on his return home he checked our lambing barn— more of a reconnaissance mission, really. Meanwhile, my job was to prepare lamb bottles, pack snacks for the barn, wash lamb towels, get warm sinks of water ready and thaw frozen colostrum. Then I’d start breakfast while I waited for Joe, knowing full well that it may have to wait because chilled lambs came first.
Upon intake the coldest lambs went directly into sinks of warm water. Their stiff little bodies were so cold that often the water had to be swapped out several times for warmer water. The kids filed downstairs and took their place in the assembly line of sorts: me with the new arrivals in the sink; the kids with dry towels and a warm bottles of milk; and last, Joe ferrying in the new recruits from the lambing barn.
The lambs were resilient and we lost only a few during those weeks as long as we could raise their core temperature and get some much needed colostrum in their tummies. There is something so amazing to see a frozen lifeless body start to move, the eyes blink and consciousness register as they look around. Then the ultimate test for survival is slipping a milk covered finger into the lamb’s cool mouth ….. wait….wait… and YES starts to suckle! As a shepherd I’m here to tell you it’s one of the greatest sensations in the world and a miracle of Mother Nature when that half frozen little lamb wraps it’s little tongue around your finger and you can feel the suction pressure and it’s thirst for life.
“This one’s good to go……Next!” And that lamb went to the kids for drying and a bottle, and the next lamb to the sink.
We dried and returned the lambs from the triage at the house as quickly as possible to their mothers in the barn. The longer the separation the less chance they’ll accept them back, and the warm water removed the familial smell. However, there are a few tricks to get the lambs to smell like their mothers after being bathed in warm water and the best trick is if the ewes haven’t fully discharged their afterbirth. Without getting too graphic for non-farm folks you can use your imagination to guess how I got the smell on the lambs. Another trick is to stretch the ewe’s cervix again to make her think she’s birthed another lamb. “Oh my look at your beautiful new lamb.” It works every time if not too much time has passed since the last lamb. There were, of course, those few that didn’t take back their lambs, so those lambs went out for adoption to ewes that birthed singles or were raised in the bum pen. Our success rate was high and we figured a live lamb and brief separation from mom was worth the risk and better than a lamb popsicle any day.
After all this, it was time for the humans to return to the house for breakfast and reboot for the next session. We’d like to think that good management prevailed, but there was an ample amount of luck and teamwork as well.
A GUARDIANS WATCH:
We were riding high on a wave of good health, high lambing percentages and low herd disease — and no loss to predators in 2003. This was an anomaly as there were coyotes all around us and neighbors were having coyote trouble, but we had the secret weapon in Spooner, our trusted old guardian dog. Spooner had won his stripes and established his territory with the coyotes of Coal Creek, and we didn’t realize how valuable he really was until his 8th and final season of guarding our flock in 2004.
The winter of 2004 arrived and was relatively mild as we skated through lambing season without many frozen ears and tails. However, as luck would have it, our ewes contracted a virus that resulted in many full term aborted lambs. And just when we thought our troubles were over, our old Spooner unexpectedly disappeared. He was nowhere to be found, we looked everywhere. Finally, about 6 weeks later I spotted him as I looked out the kitchen window. He had gone up to the ditch bank above the house and corrals to lie down for the last time -- he’d chosen the perfect spot to watch over his sheep and kids. We buried Spooner in the back yard that day where he will always look out over the place that he protected for so many years.
It didn’t take the coyotes long to learn of Spooner’s demise, as we were hit hard by coyotes in April & May of 2004. Between the aborted lambs and coyotes we lost about 40 % of our lambs that year. A rough year for the sheep (and the shepherds). Our new guard dog puppy “Sadie” arrived in September at 10 weeks and 32 pounds. Instinct is a fascinating thing to watch. Within a few weeks she understood her job as we kept our distance and let her find her way. From the beginning she ate, slept and spent her days with the sheep. That fall we often saw her racing around the sheep – trying to get one to play. She had her apprentice stripes by lambing season 2005, and was working full time by 10 months.
These guardian dogs are a crucial part of the lamb lickin and year around management team.
LETS GET IT DONE:
2013 was the first full lambing season at our new farm in Scio, and ewes were literally lambing as they came off the truck, so to say it started with a flurry is pretty accurate. As poor planning would have it lambing coincided with the week that Joe was scheduled to work in Colorado. So he packed his bags and headed to Colorado the 2nd week of January. In anticipation of a busy lambing week my sister, Maym, came up to help in Joe’s absence. The barn was set with 15 jugs (small pens for new lambs and their mothers) and a larger manger for birthing. Joe left for Portland Sunday morning feeling like things were in good hands. By Sunday night there had been over 50 births, and it was raining hard. Really hard. Surely it would slow down. By the end of the day on Monday, another 70 ewes had lambed.
We had lambs and ewes stuffed in makeshift pens in the hay, the horse trailer… anywhere out of the rain. Then on Tuesday, we really started to get busy. Amidst all this Sam didn’t have his drivers license and went to school 12 miles away, so Maym and I just stayed in motion: Sam to school, lambing barn, mix bottles, milk out ewe, pull lambs, tube cold lambs, process lambs. We were in stage two of the marathon, and then Maym had a family emergency and I had to leave for the airport in Portland Tuesday night. I returned about midnight from the airport, afraid to see what had happened at the barn. I literally would offer lambs to ewes that seemed close and interested.
“Here, you want this one?” And if she’d take it she got it. Single births went out in the rain. By Tuesday night at midnight we had delivered over 170 births in 72 hours. I was apologizing to ewes that I’d find in cubbyholes I’d made for them.
“I’m sorry, I forgot about you. Oh you’ve only been here a day. Stop whining, I’d say.
it was time to sent out the call? This lamb licker was exhausted and there was no end in sight.
“Joe, you need to get on the next plane home!” Is all I said.
I think Steady Eddie Joe was a little worried about me still being on location upon his return. Well, I did a good old fashioned slap down in the mirror and came to my senses and “got back on that horse” just like my Dad would expect. I was at the lambing barn when Joe cam rushing home and the good news is we were done lambing all 400 ewes in about 2 weeks. Wow!! January set the tempo for the New year!!
NEXT OUTS GO DOWN:
We rang in the New Year 2015 with the first set of twins for the season as scheduled, and life was good. We got the herd in the next day and sorted into droppers (ewes to lam in the next few days), next outs (ewes to lamb 4-7 days out) and the next sort group. This sort was a way for us to keep the closest ewes in out of the rain as they lambed. During lambing season we sorted the herd every 4-5 days as space became available in each group.
For this story I want to focus on the “next out” group which was approximately 100 ewes in the first sort. They were healthy full term ewes and all had been ultrasounded and were pregnant with twins or triplets. Beautiful sheep! Anyway, the next outgroup was receiving about a pound of corn to supplement the grass sprouts and alfalfa they were getting to round out their nutritional requirements. It was the third morning, before daylight, and Joe had just scattered the corn down the bunks, the girls were clamoring around and you could hear them chewing the corn, see their breath rising in the wet cool morning, and smell wet wool. I started back towards the gate to hold it open for the fodder (grass sprouts) wagon when I saw a ewe drop mid stride in front of me. I took a few more steps and by the time I reached Joe 14 were down with no pulse. In a matter of 36 hours we lost 26 full term ewes and their lambs for no explained reason— and only from the first out group.
We immediately opened the gate and let the living cohort ewes out of the paddock away from whatever was killing them. We swept up all the corn and with the help of OSU’s Veterinary Department we necropsied ewes and treated any living with neurological symptoms. After countless test there was nothing definitive except it was likely an unproven toxin in the corn that was the culprit.
I continued to check the remaining 70 plus ewes from this group up in their pasture and I’ll never forget one ewe in particular that I found. She was symptomatic with neurological tremors, but had just birthed two lambs. I heard her gurgling at her lambs before I saw her. I returned with the wagon and loaded the wobbly ewe and her lambs in the wagon. She was so weak she couldn’t stand and her bag was black so I didn’t bother to milk her , but let her gurgle and nurture those twins fore three days while i supplemented them with bottles. She never gave up, and mothered, gurgled and licked those babies until she took her last breath that third day. Her will to live was humbling and in all of her pain and suffering her mind was only on taking care of her lambs. Needless to say those bummies became favorites of mine.
There was nothing more hopeless, helpless than watching these animals we’d spent our lives keeping healthy dwindle and perish in a matter of hours. It took some digging deep, some faith and some hope in the future to remain hopeful in those dark days of January, but every bucking healthy lamb, and nurturing healthy ewe, and the will of the weak to live kept us forging on. My heart ached, but what were we to do, it was out of our hands? We also thanked Bert and Merce for coming to help us through this difficult time. They showed up, shoveled pens, fed bums and did their part to keep us a float. It’s crazy how a bucking bum lamb can secure your faith in good things to come.
FINAL HURRAH:
Everything has a season and a reason, and yes even lickin’ lambs fits that bill. The final chapter for us was the sweetest ever as we had some of our besties come and share our love, sweat and tears in the lambing barn in 2016 before we had to sell the sheep and farm due to my declining health. A special shout-out and thanks to my sisters Sarah and Maym, my sisters in law Bert and Merce and my wee cousin Bridget who came for the final hurrah.
As a kid, we always used to say… “when I come back, I want to come back as a …””” well I can say with surety If I come back as something I want it to be a shepherd, yep I want to do it all over again. Lickin lambs was truly one of the biggest joys of my life, and I challenge anyone to call a sheep stupid in front of me. They are one of the most noble, brave, peaceful and stoic creatures to wander this earth and I’m humbled to have been their caretaker for so many years.
Some good videos from our years lambing:
