10:12 am, 2 May 2010
overcast & mild

It's been such a busy couple of days that posting about it slid by the wayside. Fanta, our ewe with bloat, was staggering on over the course of a couple of days when she seemed suddenly to take a turn for the worse. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that she was not going into prolapse as we'd feared, but instead, had gone into labor. It turned out to be a very difficult labor, and one farmer had to play obstetrician with a pair of nitrile gloves (many pairs in fact were used over the course of the night) while the other held both the ewe and a light source in an appropriate position.

Because life is cruel and entertaining (to other people), it was the coldest, rainiest night in quite a while. We got the resulting ewe lamb upstairs under a heat lamp and fed it some colostrum replacement, not realizing that the reason for Fanta's not giving milk was that she was still in labor. In the morning, we found she'd given birth to another lamb.

We attempted to save this lamb, and did get it out of hypothermia, but it never managed to successfully suckle its mother in its single day of life. Fanta was not rejecting of it, but never gave it the same attention as the first lamb; it died in the night of hypothermic shock.

Fanta meanwhile is still a trifle weak but mostly recovered from her bloat. We'll keep her and her lamb for another day or so and then see about putting her back in with the flock.

Meanwhile, the ewe flock did another escape - while the ram flock was out grazing for the day. We decided at this point it's easier to contain both flocks together. Hercules, our dominant ram, thinks he is now king of the world, with a harem of over 30 ewes. Thankfully he isn't in rut. He'd die of exhaustion.

Mitey, by contrast, got tangled in fencing yesterday and was rescued by a farmer in time. He was mad as hell about it, though, and did not like being carried bodily around. Tough for him.

The dogs came for a visit, but it did not work out for various reasons. We'll just have to hope for the best and keep on trucking.

The sheep are all in the smaller enclosure at present. This seems to actually be working quite well; only one ewe was out this morning, one of the smaller ewes.After days of half or more of the ewe flock being out on a regular basis, this is nothing short of a relief. She was shooed back in when the rest were fed, and while Jojo got out at that point, she is on the correct side of the fence at least, so we opted to leave her out rather than lose more sheep in a futile effort to get her back in. We can always get her later.

Today we will be going to the farm store, burying the dead lamb, and letting the sheep out to graze once those items are done. We are likely to try and take it a little bit easy, as our Friday night and Saturday were so strenuous. Sheep births, like human births, rarely take place at times convenient for business or sleep.