Midnight special

Our official Head Ewe, Tillie started acting very grumpy after afternoon feed yesterday. She put her head down in an odd corner of fence away from the flock, and charged me several times when I came to see what was up.

Mean old girl! But I expect she blames us for the pregnancy. Her upteenth. She's probably ten years old. We don't know for sure, since we never got full details from the people we got her from. But this will be her last, though, because you could tell today that she's done with the breeding game.

I'll tell you what happened next, and you will see why.

So we sorted her into the lambing pen. It's easy enough to catch a charging sheep if you're not in a confined space or on slippy ground. They sort of play into your hands, literally, since if you field and catch a sheep's head and hold it tight and turn it or lift it so they can't see where they're going, then you have them and can move them around well enough. It's a bit like a rugby pass, I always think. Aimee, who's now back from Nicaragua where she had very big adventures in the campos and in the jungle, was on hand to do gates, which makes life easier for me. Once caught, Tillie was easily bundled into the lambing pen despite being a very grumpy old ewe.

(Normally she's very sweet and loves to be petted and spoiled.)

There she stood for quite a while, bleating occasionally for her missing family (all the way up at the other end of the barn, at least fifteen feet away!), until I went out to do a check at 10.30 pm (right after we went through Aimee's hundreds of pictures from Nicaragua for the first time).

The water had broken and part of the water bag was sticking out, but nothing else as yet. I got Aimee and we watched for forty minutes as Tillie struggled quite a bit to get a very large, very yellow lamb out. Tillie then proceeded to lick it to death the way ewes do, which I expect helps stimulate the baby. Tillie doesn't like to see a newborn lying down on the job, and literally kicks and hoofs it up with her feet, until it stands up for itself, which is brutal to watch, but never seems to hurt the lamb. None of our other ewes do this kicking and hoofing thing, only Tillie.

That seemed to be it, so we waited until the lamb was on its feet and drying off well enough, then retired to wait for the placenta. Tillie was still charging us anytime we made moves to get into the pen, and she's a big ewe, very hard-headed, so we didn't try to feel for another lamb. We guessed there wasn't one, and all that charging and ramming in the lamb pen can be very dangerous for the baby.

I went to bed for an hour or so; Aimee stayed up working on her pictures and stuff.

At about 1pm, Aimee yelled up the stairs, and I struggled awake. Another lamb coming. But this one was stuck. I struggled to get my overalls on, but by the time I'd got out to the barn, Aimee had pulled the second lamb out. Aimee said it had had one foot back, which is not too bad of a position, but with an older ewe like Till, it was enough to turn a routine birth into a marathon.

Tillie, by this time was prostrate with fatigue.

But, since she was down and calm, more or less, we could now get in the pen and work with her safely. This was why Aimee, normally much more circumspect than me about ramming sheep, had been able to get her hand in Tillie's vagina. Aimee, it must be admitted, also has tiny slender hands. My big hands are not great for this job.

Now it was my turn to help. I stripped a big wax plug out of her teat, causing a pained "baa" as the milk spurted out for the first time under high pressure. then I jammed the nipple in the first lambs mouth and stripped some milk right in. He got the idea and started to feed. The second lamb was put up by Tillie's head, and she started the licking process from a prone position, which was sort of sad, but it did allow one lamb to get licked while the other taught itself to feed. At one point the first lamb made Aimee laugh by trying to find a nipple on my woolly sweater, banging me with it's head as if I had an udder. After a while we helped poor old Till back up, and then watched and waited a little longer before going in again.

We set the alarm for an hour later, 2.15, and both went to bed. But Aimee's far-too-complicated computer alarm clock had the "weekend override" on, which meant we slept way too long. At 4am Aimee kicked me awake and sent me out to check, following along groggily in my wake.

We stumbled into the barn where we found all more or less well. Tillie had expelled the placenta, the lambs were drying off. Back to bed, where we slept until 7.30, very late for us.

But when I finally woke and went out again, the lambs were feeding.

All's well that ends well, I guess.

But this is definitely Tillie's last time as a mom. This particular birthing hurt her pretty badly.