Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the mucus. Be sure that you have a good grip on the lamb to avoid throw-
ing it out of the barn, and be sure that its head will clear the ground and all
obstacles!
If the ewe is exhausted by a diffi cult labor, then place the lamb at the ewe's
nose so she can begin bonding. Help dry off the lamb with old towels (old
fl annel sheets cut up into rags also work really well) so that it doesn't get too
cold from being wet too long. Don't remove the lamb from the mom's sight
if you can help it, as this can disrupt bonding. Overuse of a heat lamp to dry
the lamb may result in a chill after removal and can predispose the lamb to
pneumonia.
If the cord is not cut to the proper length, some ewes try to nibble at the
navel and can injure the lamb. One year Paula had an excited ewe that chewed
the tail off her newborn lamb, nibbling it as if it were an umbilical cord.
She put a band on the tail, above where the ewe had chewed it, dunked it in
iodine, and left for a few minutes. When she got back, the ewe had had a sec-
ond lamb, and she chomped the tail off that one, too! She then proceeded to
lick off the lambs in the normal way and turned out to be a wonderful mother.
(If this had happened with more than one ewe, Paula would have suspected a
nutritional defi ciency, for this abnormal behavior is often a sign of nutritional
problems.)
Feeding the Lamb
The lamb is best fed on Mama, but at times you need to help get the process
going. When the ewe stands up, she'll nudge the lamb toward her udder with
her nose. The lamb is born with the instinct to look for her teats and is drawn
to the smell of the waxy secretion of the mammary pouch gland in Mama's
groin. If the udder or teats are dirty with mud or manure, a swab with a weak
chlorine bleach solution (1 tablespoon of chlorine bleach in 1 quart of water
is plenty) before the lamb nurses will clean things up and help prevent intes-
tinal infection in the lamb.
Let the lamb nurse by itself if it will, but do not let more than half an hour
to an hour pass without its nursing, as the colostrum (the ewe's fi rst milk
after lambing) provides not only warmth and energy but also antibodies to the
common disease organisms in the sheep's environment. We usually opt not
to interfere for about 20 minutes after the lamb is up on all fours and looking
for a teat. If after 20 minutes it hasn't found the teat, is trying to nurse but
doesn't seem to be getting any milk, or the mom won't let it nurse, we inter-
cede. (This is easy with some ewes, which will stand really still until you and
