My Nursery

Chaos is a friend of mine.

—BOB DYLAN

 

 

 

 

Although spinning and birthing babies aren’t my skills, I’m great at dealing with bottle lambs in the spring. I love the need to shift my focus away from everything else in my life—writing, speaking, friends, family, volunteering, cleaning the house—and focus on one thing: keeping the babies in my nursery safe, healthy, and well fed. I don’t know this at the time, of course, but in a few years there will come a spring without lambs, without babies in the barn that depend on me for survival. Only then will I realize that I need them as much as they need me.

After a few years of lambing, we think we have the whole process figured out, but then one day we stand in the pasture admiring our first set of triplets. Two are round and plump, and hop around like healthy lambs. When they stand up, they stretch luxuriously, a sign of good health. But the third triplet is skinny and a little hunched over. He doesn’t hop or stretch. We wait until the lambs are looking the other way, then we drop low and creep closer. Melissa’s reflexes are quicker than mine, so she grabs the back leg of the skinny lamb. Got him!

The lamb’s belly isn’t full and tight with milk as it should be, so we conclude that the mother doesn’t have enough milk to feed three babies. We do some research and learn that when a ewe is grazing on grass without any grain supplement, even though she can feed all three lambs for a couple of weeks, she’ll reach a point where she doesn’t have enough milk and one lamb will start falling behind.

So we begin automatically bringing in the smallest of triplets a few days after its birth and feeding it ourselves. The lamb grows faster and is happier. These types of lambs are called bottle lambs or bonus lambs. My mom, raised on that sheep ranch in southeastern Montana, calls them bum lambs. That’s because in huge range flocks with 1,500 sheep, a lamb’s pretty much on his own. If his mom doesn’t have enough milk to feed him, the only way he’ll survive is by sneaking up to other ewes and “bumming” a little milk before they realize the wrong lamb’s taking a drink. Sheep are very fussy about that.

So my spring lambing ritual involves empty pop bottles and a bag of powdered milk so fine that opening the bag sends powder floating through the air to eventually settle onto my kitchen counter and floor. Add a bit of water, say on the dogs’ feet, and you have a nice slurry of milk on everything.

Very young lambs need to be fed four times a day because their tummies are too small to hold much. It takes a while for a lamb to catch on to the bottle—the nipple doesn’t feel right in the mouth, so the lamb spits it out. My first year as a lamb nanny was hard because I was terrified that the babies were going to starve. I’d spend ten minutes trying to get a new bottle lamb to nurse and end up in tears because she wouldn’t. I’d go out to the barn every hour, sit down on an overturned five-gallon bucket, and try again.

Experience has taught me that a small lamb, once it consumes plenty of colostrum, might go a day without eating. By then it’s very hungry and will suck on the bottle in desperation. Suddenly the incandescent light bulb goes on: Holy Cow! There’s milk in here!

As our ewes mature and give birth to more and more triplets, I grow proficient at dealing with bottle lambs. My skills progress to the point I can feed five babies at once—two bottles in each hand, and one between them. But when the lambs are about three weeks old, they begin pushing each other off the bottles and maneuvering for the best spot. Chaos ensues. I must feed them one at a time, so I pick up a lamb and drape it across my lap. The weather is warm, the sun streaks through the open barn door, chickens coo happily around me, and I have a baby on my lap with a fiercely wagging tail making happy, slurpy sounds as it drinks. There are worse ways to spend an hour.

I don’t like keeping them in the barn all day, so I set up a temporary pen outside with a mix of shade and sun. Some of the lambs quickly become so tame that I take them for short walks with me. One year, three little lambs follow me all around the yard, single file. Mary had a little lamb, indeed.

The craziest year, however, is when we have sixteen bottle lambs, thanks to triplets and a few mothering mishaps on the pasture. Feeding sixteen becomes a major nightmare, so we buy a bucket designed to feed many lambs at once. It’s a white, five-gallon bucket with ten black nipples around the top. Running from each nipple down into the bucket is a clear plastic tube. All the lambs have to do is suck up the milk, and they’re good to go.

The bucket, unfortunately, has been designed by an idiot. The milk must come all the way up the tube to reach the nipple, which means the lamb sucks and sucks, getting nothing but air. Just as milk reaches the nipple, the hungry lamb gives up. I stand there and watch the milk slide back down the tube. Acck! Try again! I get the lamb latched back onto the nipple, she sucks, and just as the milk reaches the top of the bucket she gives up. We need a bucket with the nipples on the bottom so the lambs get milk immediately. We would have invested in this, or in one of the many other devices shepherds have invented to make feeding bottle lambs easier, but then I figure something out. Many people living in the country want sheep but don’t want to make their own.

I put an ad in the paper every spring, and nearly every year I have more orders for bottle lambs than I can fill. Melissa brings a triplet in, I feed it for a few days until it reliably drinks from the bottle, then I call the person at the top of the list.

When the very first buyer came, I carried the two lambs to their car, all the while filling the buyers’ heads with everything they needed to know to keep the lambs healthy. We talked and talked, and I couldn’t figure out why they weren’t leaving.

Oh. I was still holding the lambs. They’re hard to give up. Now I’ve learned to pick up the lamb, kiss its little head, then hand it immediately to the new owner before I change my mind. I’m not embarrassed they see me kiss the lamb because I want them to know the lamb is valued, and that I expect them to value it as well. As each car drives away, I sigh, missing the lambs already.