Lulu After Midnight
1:38 a.m. Wake up, go potty.
1:39 a.m. Put on glasses. Go upstairs to drag zombie son out of bed to get him to the toilet. You see, Stevie is still in pull-ups at night. (We've tried.) But when we ran out of pull-ups this last time, we decided to make another effort to get him up in the night to pee. This night, he had peed a little bit. I hooked my arms under his armpits and got him to the potty. He shook off his pants and I got him another pair of underwear. He found his way back to bed like a parched desert wanderer finds his way to a glass of water. Dry this morning! We'll get there.
1:42 Put on polypro shirt and pajama bottoms. Pull on muck boots and a coat. Head outside.
1:44 Check on chickens. We lost one to a mystery predator the night before because they were just roosting in the open barn. Chickens are pretty sluggish when they're roosting and it wouldn't be tough to catch one. Kevin made them a little cage to sleep in. Earlier, I had plucked each chicken off her roost spot (told you it was easy) and let her loose in the cage. They weren't happy to be taken off their big girl perches to spend the night hunkered down in the straw, but it beats the alternative. I blocked the door with hay bales, and Kevin blocked the door into their sleeping quarters with pallets framing a Hav-a-Heart trap. So...at 1:44...all eight chickens are accounted for, and the trap is empty.
1:46 Head to the pasture to check on Olive and little Pimento. 'Who the hell is pimento?' you say? Our first little lamb! Here's how it all went down:
Yesterday morning, Kevin bursts into the house and says "You have a lamb!" Quickquick I get outside on this miserably cold day and find it--huddled in the corner of the sheep shed, covered with birth stuff and shivering in the mud, surrounded by Olive and the two rams. I pick it up and stuff it inside my coat to keep it warm. Then I go hunting for runaway mom. Thinking it had to be one of the old ewes, as Olive was too young for motherhood and didn't even look pregnant, I walked up to each one and lifted tails, looking for any evidence that one of them had just given birth.
Nothing. I double-checked. Only April appeared to have anything going on--was that a spot of the same yellowish goo that was on the lamb? Has to be April. So I start to slowly corner her, all the while holding onto the lamb in my coat--aaaah. It just peed on my pjs--got her! Reach over, grab one of her oversized teats and...she runs away. Corner her again. Grab for the teat, off she goes.
"Hey, Stevie! Will you please take this lamb into the barn and put her under the brooder lamp and keep her company?"
Stevie gently takes this wet, muddy lamb without a second thought and does exactly what I ask him to do. Good kid.
Meanwhile, I get ahold of April again. (By the way, I had grabbed a big plastic cup before coming outside. Kevin is at the local farm store, buying sheep milk replacer, powdered colostrum, and a bottle.) I straddle her shoulders, facing her rump. Leaning over, I grab ahold of that one dirty teat and try to remember all those shows where someone is teaching someone else how to milk a cow: squeeze at the top, and roll the squeeze down.
But nothing is happening. Her teat is cold and dry. And kinda dirty.
Why am I trying to milk her anyway? Because the three old ewes that are spending their retirement years on my pasture have misshapen teats that no lamb will be able to grab onto. They can have babies, but the lambs will have to be bottle fed. Still, the vet said that if I can milk them--at least of their colostrum--the little lambs will be much better for it. So there I was, straddling a sheep, trying to squeeze nourishment from her uncaring breast. Where's the love, April?
Meanwhile, Kevin makes it home with the supplies and mixes up a batch of all-species 'dried bovine colostrum'. I go into the barn and fetch the lamb, thinking I'll feed her in the house. Kevin meets me halfway and I hold her in my coat while Kevin tries to shove the bottle in its mouth and feed her without drowning her. We manage to get some liquid into her and I'm on my way into the house. Kevin is grabbing a big planting pot and some straw to fix her up with a bed in the house. Then Stevie comes in.
"Olive is the mom."
"How do you know?"
"Because the umbilical cord is coming out of her!"
Olive is the mom. Olive was pregnant?! My little baby sheep is old enough to be a mommy? Like all teen moms, Olive carried it well--I just thought she was enjoying the green grass! Her udder didn't even show, let alone look swollen and ready to feed a lamb. I DID wonder why she was wearing all those oversized sweatshirts....
Poor Olive! There she was, around her baby, and I took her baby away! When I rushed out to the sheep shed, there she was, walking around it and baaah-ing for her lost babe. I put the lamb down and whew!--mother and child reunion.
We sprang into action. Luckily, I had just bought a few bales of straw a couple of days prior (for the chickens and the garden). I spread out a bale onto the damp, muddy ground inside the shed. Kevin got more pallets and fashioned a half wall along the front to keep sheepy mom and baby in and everyone else out. I brought Olive some water, two kinds of hay, and some alfalfa pellets. She and baby laid down and didn't move much for a couple of hours. Then it happened.
Olive got up, gave a couple of pushes, and out came the afterbirth. Immediately, then, baby hops up and starts nursing. Yay.
1:46 Olive and Pimento are fine. Pimento is nursing! Lucky little lamb managed to snag the one mom who could actually nurse.
1:48 Counting sheep, shining the flashlight into the dark corners of the horse shed to make sure there are no abandoned lambs around. Shine it down by the woods, too, to let any opportunistic predators know that, yes, I'm here, and, yes, I'll kill you if you come near.
1:53 Back to bed. Go over this post in my head. Ahhhhh. Sleep.
1:39 a.m. Put on glasses. Go upstairs to drag zombie son out of bed to get him to the toilet. You see, Stevie is still in pull-ups at night. (We've tried.) But when we ran out of pull-ups this last time, we decided to make another effort to get him up in the night to pee. This night, he had peed a little bit. I hooked my arms under his armpits and got him to the potty. He shook off his pants and I got him another pair of underwear. He found his way back to bed like a parched desert wanderer finds his way to a glass of water. Dry this morning! We'll get there.
1:42 Put on polypro shirt and pajama bottoms. Pull on muck boots and a coat. Head outside.
1:44 Check on chickens. We lost one to a mystery predator the night before because they were just roosting in the open barn. Chickens are pretty sluggish when they're roosting and it wouldn't be tough to catch one. Kevin made them a little cage to sleep in. Earlier, I had plucked each chicken off her roost spot (told you it was easy) and let her loose in the cage. They weren't happy to be taken off their big girl perches to spend the night hunkered down in the straw, but it beats the alternative. I blocked the door with hay bales, and Kevin blocked the door into their sleeping quarters with pallets framing a Hav-a-Heart trap. So...at 1:44...all eight chickens are accounted for, and the trap is empty.
1:46 Head to the pasture to check on Olive and little Pimento. 'Who the hell is pimento?' you say? Our first little lamb! Here's how it all went down:
Yesterday morning, Kevin bursts into the house and says "You have a lamb!" Quickquick I get outside on this miserably cold day and find it--huddled in the corner of the sheep shed, covered with birth stuff and shivering in the mud, surrounded by Olive and the two rams. I pick it up and stuff it inside my coat to keep it warm. Then I go hunting for runaway mom. Thinking it had to be one of the old ewes, as Olive was too young for motherhood and didn't even look pregnant, I walked up to each one and lifted tails, looking for any evidence that one of them had just given birth.
Nothing. I double-checked. Only April appeared to have anything going on--was that a spot of the same yellowish goo that was on the lamb? Has to be April. So I start to slowly corner her, all the while holding onto the lamb in my coat--aaaah. It just peed on my pjs--got her! Reach over, grab one of her oversized teats and...she runs away. Corner her again. Grab for the teat, off she goes.
"Hey, Stevie! Will you please take this lamb into the barn and put her under the brooder lamp and keep her company?"
Stevie gently takes this wet, muddy lamb without a second thought and does exactly what I ask him to do. Good kid.
Meanwhile, I get ahold of April again. (By the way, I had grabbed a big plastic cup before coming outside. Kevin is at the local farm store, buying sheep milk replacer, powdered colostrum, and a bottle.) I straddle her shoulders, facing her rump. Leaning over, I grab ahold of that one dirty teat and try to remember all those shows where someone is teaching someone else how to milk a cow: squeeze at the top, and roll the squeeze down.
But nothing is happening. Her teat is cold and dry. And kinda dirty.
Why am I trying to milk her anyway? Because the three old ewes that are spending their retirement years on my pasture have misshapen teats that no lamb will be able to grab onto. They can have babies, but the lambs will have to be bottle fed. Still, the vet said that if I can milk them--at least of their colostrum--the little lambs will be much better for it. So there I was, straddling a sheep, trying to squeeze nourishment from her uncaring breast. Where's the love, April?
Meanwhile, Kevin makes it home with the supplies and mixes up a batch of all-species 'dried bovine colostrum'. I go into the barn and fetch the lamb, thinking I'll feed her in the house. Kevin meets me halfway and I hold her in my coat while Kevin tries to shove the bottle in its mouth and feed her without drowning her. We manage to get some liquid into her and I'm on my way into the house. Kevin is grabbing a big planting pot and some straw to fix her up with a bed in the house. Then Stevie comes in.
"Olive is the mom."
"How do you know?"
"Because the umbilical cord is coming out of her!"
Olive is the mom. Olive was pregnant?! My little baby sheep is old enough to be a mommy? Like all teen moms, Olive carried it well--I just thought she was enjoying the green grass! Her udder didn't even show, let alone look swollen and ready to feed a lamb. I DID wonder why she was wearing all those oversized sweatshirts....
Poor Olive! There she was, around her baby, and I took her baby away! When I rushed out to the sheep shed, there she was, walking around it and baaah-ing for her lost babe. I put the lamb down and whew!--mother and child reunion.
We sprang into action. Luckily, I had just bought a few bales of straw a couple of days prior (for the chickens and the garden). I spread out a bale onto the damp, muddy ground inside the shed. Kevin got more pallets and fashioned a half wall along the front to keep sheepy mom and baby in and everyone else out. I brought Olive some water, two kinds of hay, and some alfalfa pellets. She and baby laid down and didn't move much for a couple of hours. Then it happened.
Olive got up, gave a couple of pushes, and out came the afterbirth. Immediately, then, baby hops up and starts nursing. Yay.
1:46 Olive and Pimento are fine. Pimento is nursing! Lucky little lamb managed to snag the one mom who could actually nurse.
1:48 Counting sheep, shining the flashlight into the dark corners of the horse shed to make sure there are no abandoned lambs around. Shine it down by the woods, too, to let any opportunistic predators know that, yes, I'm here, and, yes, I'll kill you if you come near.
1:53 Back to bed. Go over this post in my head. Ahhhhh. Sleep.
posted by lulu | 6:08 AM
2 Comments:
Wow!
The glorious miracle of life--along with the fact that you made me think of James Herriot and "Juno" within one minute of each other.
Afternoon update: I let Olive and Pimento out to run around in the sun. Things were going well for an hour or so. And then Tina, Little Cousin's hateful, worthless horse, started chasing them. They could keep up for a few seconds, and then Tina started running fast, Olive ran for her life, and Pimento got "pawed"--hard!--by Tina. I watched this happening and ran screaming into the pasture, straight toward a motionless Pimento.
I thought for sure Pimento would be dead. It's long back legs were all splayed out to the side, and there was a brown hoof mark on its side. I pet him, he stirred, and then...
...up he went! He walked it off! Unbelievable.
So now I have to pen off the ewes until they're done lambing and the lambs are big enough to hold their own against that goddamn horse.
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