Of hypothermic lambs and crazy yows...
Posted: Thursday, 05 April 2007 |
2 comments |
So, sheep #7 dropped her triplets and she loathes them!! She hates their cute little pelts and tries to bash them to bits every time they so much as wiggle a tail. But...if they are laying down she can't get enough of them and she nickers and licks them and just looooooves them. I just don't get this chick.
We had to stick her in the lamb adopter (has a yoke so she can't kill her lambs while they nurse etc) and leave her with twa of the little squalling critters. (Do lambs EVER get enough food??) She loves them, hates them. Loves them, hates them. It's a crazy cycle!
This is the lamb adopter.
We tried to graft triplet #3 onto a yow that had lost her lambs but she uh...lay on his head. Erlend found him JUST in time but he wasn't breathing so Erlend blew into his nose and revived him. (Farm Rescue!) To make matters even worse for the little guy he was also hypothermic!! So we lay him before the fire and injected him with glucose. It was tense for a while as his wee little body lay there struggling to survive and then all of a sudden he burst awake screaming for food! In the livingroom! For hours!! I hastily threw together a waterproof pen with cardboard boxes and peat buckets so he couldn't wee all over the floor. We had to shout over him as we ate dinner and drank our afternoon cups of tea. I picked him up and stroked his cute wooly body and he quit screaming - only to crap all over me. (Erlend found this highly amusing...) Around 4pm I began to twitch and drool as he screamed away in his pen but happily he was strong enough to be returned to the byre shortly thereafter.
But hey, a sick lamb can't make that kind of noise so this is a good thing! (As long as he's singing in the byre...)
Here is the poor little lamb warming before the fire. We didn't know if he would recover...
And here he is alive and well - and screaming for milk!
And now...I'm Mummy Yow to the wee lad. Or should I say, "Milk Slave."
We've had three yows abort their lambs due to a disease brought in by CAT CRAP because my little kitties are crapping away in the barley and the silage. And the sheep pens because of that nice straw. Thanks, cats. This is what I get for all the tinned food and love!! Crap, crap, crap. They have 300 acres of prime crapping land and they have to concentrate on the sheep byre!! I'm going to buy some little corks and stuff them up...*ahem* anyhoo,
Jimmy cracked corn and I don't care...Jimmy cracked corn and I don't care! Jimmy cracked corn and I don't care...
Ok, I'm no longer mad at the cats and can proceed.
Erlend has been having his fields ploughed and harrowed and seeded. I hopped on board with him the other day while he was harrowing a field. Talk about agricultural romance - all of his tractors have second seats just for little ol' me! That was my rare break from sheep...
Alrighty then! Time to crawl under a rock and die. Ok, I'm kidding! I really don't mind this life - I just kinda mind the utter lack of sleep. I can't get a nap for squat what with slurry tankers thundering by, coos roaring, sheep screaming, lambs wailing, dogs wheesking (Zeb is totally freaked out about the lambs) and husbands clunking into the hoose in heavy barn boots and bellowing, "Hello? HELLO?? Where aire thoo? OH! Aire thoo upstairs takin a kip, budoo?? I didnae ken!" (I was. But NOT NOW!!
NOT EVER!! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHRRRRRGGGGGG!!)
The Milk Slave must return to her wee screaming master... (He'd better grow up FAT and HAPPY!!)
Until next time...I'll try to get the pictures resized so I can post some shots of the lambs!
Posted on Things Go Moo in the Night... at 21:36
Comments
I bet you wouldn't have it any other way ... :-) lovely, if 'alternative' description of farming life ... :-)
soaplady from jealous of so much access to little lambies
Farming is such a lovely way of life. But I've discovered that it is not all bonnie green fields and snow-white lambs. It is dirt and filth, dung and stench! It's slimey newborn lambs and late late late nights and oh-my-word-it's-too-early mornings!! I love it but...well, I try to share the reality as well as the beauty!
Michelle Therese from In a pile of smelly muck
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