First lamb of the season today! And what a way to start it off... Normally a lamb drops and is up in good time, getting down to the business of nursing before even drying off, it's absurdly long tail wiggling like a soaked weasel. Or something. That's a disgusting analogy.
At any rate, today's lamb was not normal. For one thing she is, quite literally the black sheep of the family. Glossy black with a big white spot on her forehead. Like Black Beauty if Black Beauty were a sheep instead of a horse. Perhaps that shall be her name... A black sheep might not seem strange but for the fact that her parents were both white and (supposedly) have no genes to trend toward blackness. There's always one odd one. For another thing she was so weak she couldn't stand, which is where all the fun began.
After Dad had been up to see the sheep he called me and let me know that we had a lamb down, and would I go check on it ASAP? Of course I said yes cheerfully, it being a good excuse for a walk and the first lamb of the season. By the time lambing is all over I'm sure I shall accept the task of lamb-checking under duress, but this morning it seemed like fun.
Unfortunately the weather didn't wish to cooperate with my plan of walking, but being stubborn I refused to drive a mile up the road. The wind was howling, luckily pushing me from behind. There was even a bit of snow, just to make things that much more interesting. The walk back, into the wind's cutting teeth was just as much fun as it sounds.
Upon reaching the barn I found the new mother caring quite well for her lamb. Of course, the second she saw me she took off with the rest of the flock as they scurried for cover from what ever horrors I was about visit upon them. Sheep are very dramatic.
The baby needing to nurse, but too weak to stand, my only course of action was to capture the mother and secure her in a way that would allow me to get the baby on her teat. I managed to separate her from the flock, herd her into the barn, and block the door with a large watering tub... Which she promptly jumped over leaving only the lamb and I.
After reassuring the little bundle of damp blackness I left the barn, crook in hand, to call the mother to task. As I closed in on her I reminded her that she had brought the lamb into the world and now had a duty to care for it. Apparently sheep don't take to guilt as readily as humans for she simply loped a bit further away.
After a harrowing chase through a waterlogged pasture I managed to catch the delinquent ewe and pulled, pushed, coaxed, and cajoled her into the barn where I managed to tie her in a corner. The lamb had managed to bury herself into the hay, so it took a bit of looking to find her, but once I did it was time to have her nurse.
For ten minutes she nursed, at which time she began to look quite bored with her current teat and began searching for another one. I had been kneeling, hunched over, next to her holding her head up to facilitate her feeding so I was more than happy for an excuse to stand and turn the ewe to access her other side. Once again the black lamb set to with a will and by the time she was done I could feel her little belly bulging. She still couldn't stand, but she would last until milk replacer could be acquired.
When I released the ewe she gave me several looks that ranged from heart breaking timid to scathingly angry, then bolted. I knew she would be back for her baby so I left the barn and it's in habitants to their own devices.
As things stand now the lamb (whom I've decided to call Blot, rather than Black Beauty, the latter being far too pretentious) is still a bit weak, but making progress under the watchful eye of us humans. We shall see what the coming days will bring (more lambs, in all likelihood).
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