At 2:30am, he woke me with the great news that Acorn had progressed! Her bag of waters was protruding! That is an actual sign of labor, and a sheep has 30 minutes to deliver without trouble once that happens. We wanted to give her some time, so we suited up slowly and went out.
Now something was definitely wrong. Ashley, concerned matriarch ewe, was calling to us constantly: help my friend, help my friend. Acorn was down, and not getting up; no lamb was out.
I heated some water and soaped up for an exploratory search. It was much harder than before. Acorn was in a prolonged contraction, and her vaginal canal was dried out. It took me perhaps several extremely long minutes to reach the uterus and locate any part of a lamb.
I will spare you the warm straining, the working blind, the sorrow of finding a lamb without a protective bag of waters. At one point, I got a bottom (or something) within an inch of the vaginal opening, where it wedged entirely. Poor Acorn! I had to push the lamb back into the uterus.
I located what I thought were two legs, but on extracting to the opening, it was only one. Both Phil and I thought it was a back leg. I couldn’t find another leg for a long time; couldn’t find anything. Acorn was on her side, and the lamb was wedged on the bottom. I could get no traction; she could get no satisfaction. All the time Acorn was grunting and straining. And we were fairly certain the lamb was dead—absolutely no movement. Acorn sounded like she could die at any moment. It was awful.
Bad Paragraph: Worse was when I somehow managed to get the lamb out. Apparently I had grabbed a front leg and the head was tucked back, and the lamb was born with a broken neck. The only relief I can find from that horrible fact is that we believed the lamb was already dead. Which makes me only a mangler and not a killer. Tuition in the school of farming is awfully high. I tossed the dead lamb over the electric fence and focused on Acorn again.
Better paragraph: Immediately after the dead lamb came out, the hind feet of a second lamb came out, still in the protective amniotic sac. I think Acorn was in shock, as she lay without pushing. I tugged gently and the second lamb was born in its sac. Phil asked, “Is it dead, too?” But the lamb shook himself all over and took a breath as best it could. What a blessing!
Acorn did not stand up to lick her baby. We brought him to her, and she half-heartedly licked him from her side. We somehow got her to her feet; better prepared farms have sub-dermal shots to renew an ewe in shock—that seemed a bit much to us, so we had none. We led her to the jug, but she left again almost immediately.
She walked back to her lambing spot and called for her other lamb. She bleated and bleated, and I could only think of Rachel calling for her children and refusing to be comforted (Matthew 2:18). That was as upsetting than the actual birth of the lamb. Acorn was a good mother, and I couldn’t explain to her that her baby would not return.
The baby ram (not deformed this time!) shivered alone in the jug. Phil fixed up the door for him, then headed to the trailer to comfort Joe, who awoke to an empty bed. I remained in the jug and after a half hour or so I milked some of Acorn’s colostrum and used the drench to feed him. When I left them at 4:30am, he had not yet stood up nor nursed on his own, but I felt there was nothing else I could do for them.
I turned off the light in the barn and headed to bed.
My first thought on waking was, “The light in the barn connects to the heat lamp in the jug. You left the shivering lamb without an extra heat! And he probably has internal injuries from his birth; he probably never stood up and is dead in the jug. Maybe Acorn died, too!” I am really not an optimist.
But baby ram is alive! Despite no heat lamp and 23 degree weather outside! He bleated, and stood to nurse; Acorn, too, appears to be doing well.
Sadly, Acorn is set to cull. In all the books I’ve read about good animal husbandry, a most important point of breeding is to only pass on good breeding genetics. If a sheep or cow does not birth well, they are not fit to keep. Or if they birth deformed animals, they are not fit to keep.
I think this has both something to do with keeping the genetics of a flock as good quality as possible, and keeping the farmer costs down. If labor is one of the highest costs of production, a lamb that requires hours of intense farmer effort is an expensive lamb. And anything that might require a vet visit is instantly ruled out. For a $150 sheep, any vet visit is not going to be worth it. To be profitable, farmers need quality animals that birth easily and without medical intervention.
Celebrity farmer Joel Salatin says it better in Salad Bar Beef. He selects for cows that have
“an unassisted calf every single year. . . . Every time we give that proverbial ‘second chance,’ every time we get overly attached to a cow when she’s messed up, we regret it later. I used to ask the vet when we had a breech birth or a prolapsed uterus: ‘Well, what are the chances she’ll do this next year?’
His response was always: ‘No greater than any other cow in the herd.’ I used to believe that, but not anymore. Now her chances of a duplicate mess-up are much less, because she’s hamburger long before next year. Dr. Ike Eller, longtime beef specialist from Virginia Tech, used to tell farmers to cull for ‘the three O’s: open [unbred/infertile], old, and ornery.’ That’s pretty good advice” (77).
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