A Real Farmer Now

Technically, I'm really not. But I did put my whole hand into a sheep's vagina this morning. April had already given birth to one lamb--apparently healthy. Two hours later, she had still not given birth to the other one? two? even though she had been actively pushing for over 1/2 hour.

I gotta say--I called it, reader. Last night, April was in the horse shed, all by herself, while the other four were out grazing. "Hmmmm." I watched her for a few minutes, and saw her little sheep body tense up as if she was trying to defecate. "I bet April's going to give birth tonight."

This morning at 7 a.m., she hadn't given birth, but she was still by herself. I was leading Evil Horse Tina across the field to give her her grain. When she saw April in the horse shed, she bolted in there, chased her for a second, and then turned around and kicked at her!! Luckily, she missed, but I did throw the bucket of grain at Tina for being such an asshole. It missed. On purpose. But it was close. Stupid horse.

In order to keep April safe and comfortable, I herded her across the field to the sheep shed, 1/2 of which had been turned into an ineffective chicken coop the day before (ineffective because Kevin hadn't reinforced the bottom edges of the coop, and a raccoon or something crawled in and got a Leghorn--the second chicken in TWO days! This is really my fault, because I didn't think to check to see if it had been reinforced.). The other 1/2 of the shed was padded with fresh straw, awaiting new mommies, and April immediately went in and gave birth sometime in the next 45 minutes. I discovered the new lamb at 8 a.m., when I decided to check one more time before heading to work.

At nearly 10 a.m., after having gone back inside, changed into my overalls, grabbed a bottle of colostrum for the baby and a bucket of warm water to clean April's udder with, cleaned her udders, tried to help the lamb attach to the misshapen teats, gone back in to grab some toast and warm up a towel to dry off the lamb with (because Canada decided to send yet another ice-cold wind down this way, and April was still trying to give birth and wasn't able to offer the lamb her mothering all) and after two hours of watching this drama unfold, I called Mr. Heifer--"Is it time to call the vet?" Yes, was his reply, or I'd have a dead ewe on my hands. I called the vet, and he told me that he could either come out there, or walk me through it. And--oh yeah--she probably should've had them out by now.

"Walk me through it."

As we were talking, it looked as if April had the second one nearly out. It looked like she was trying to give birth to a dark crystal ball. No, baby sheep probably shouldn't look like that! It looked kinda like the lamb was attempting to come out rib-first. That was bad enough, but I was mostly hoping it wasn't her uterus. Seeing as how I was alone (with my cell phone in my overall pocket, though), I figured it would be tricky to hold the uterus up out of the straw, keep the ewe still, and make sure the lamb was getting fed until the vet got there.

You see, last night I just finished a book called "Hit By A Farm: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn". It's a memoir about two women--one a writer, the OTHER the farmer--who start raising sheep for a living. In the book, the non-farmer talks about the nightmare sheep-birth scenarios she read about, and that information was actually useful to me as I watched poor April grunt and groan, twist her neck at all angles, trying to push something, anything out of her old body. The preferred scenario is a little lamb 'dive' out of the birth canal--head on the front feet, and those three body parts out first. The back legs can come out first, too. The trick is to get out all the gangly parts without any one gangly part getting caught up on the pelvic bone, leading to a lamb stuck in the birth canal, leading to death by suffocation for the lamb, and perhaps to death by yuckiness for the ewe.

If the front legs are coming out and the head is not on them, you should lube up (the vet said dishwashing soap is fine--thank goodness I use the 'vagina-friendly' kind!), stick your hand in there, find the head, yank it around, and . . . pull. In the book I just read, the author makes a joke about the all the intravaginal manipulations that might be called for. My favorite was something like "find the front feet and tie a string around them" (to differentiate them from the back feet). Whhhaaaa???? The author said these books made ewe vaginas sound like roomy places where you might pause to knit a sweater while assisting with the birth. I can assure you, dear reader...they are not.

The second one came out. I helped pull the membrane off, and April licked its face, which is supposed to clear the mucus so it can breathe, but no breath came. In the book, the author talked about a similar lamb that looked every bit of dead and then, suddenly, took a breath! I gave the lamb a little time; I even jiggled it a tiny, tiny bit when I was getting the membrane off, the equivalent of smacking an infant on the butt to make it cry. Didn't work. I don't think I've ever encountered anything as floppy as a stillborn lamb. Urgh! I waited too long!

I called the vet back. "The second one is dead, but there are hooves coming out."

"Are they front hooves or back hooves?"

"I have no idea! I'm hoping for back."

"If you're ok with doing this, lube up, reach in, and feel around. If there's a head, you need to try to bring it around in line with the hooves. You may have to push the hooves back in (can you feel me here, mothers? I can feel me here.). If they're back hooves, you'll feel the tail. In that case, you can go ahead and pull."

"Should I pull...hard?"

"Try not to jerk, but you may have to pull pretty hard!"

Off the phone, lubed up, I stood behind April. I placed my left hand on her back and inserted my right to the right of the hooves. All the way in. It feels...like a bunch of really slimy bones...not sure why I needed dishwashing liquid...all is slime...not feeling a head...grab hold of back? front? ankles and pull. Thankfully, April decided to push now, and with a nice, smooth pull number 3 and the placenta slip out into the morning sun. Number 3 lamb is completely encased in membrane and placenta. Gotta get it out of there. There's an opening at the feet--grab the back! feet, lift it up, and pull the muckety muck--with veins and arteries running through it!--off the lamb. Mama licks its face, but no movement.

Call Mr. Heifer. Call the vet. "Two more lambs, both dead."

I place the dead lambs on an old towel and walk what feels like 10 pounds of dead lamb (poor mom!) to the back of the pasture and heave them over the fence. Mr. Heifer walked me through collecting colostrum and milk--"should be easy--she has a big handle to hold onto!" Imagine a 16 year-old girl, thin, perky, with milk-filled breasts that jut to the sky. No problems feeding that infant! Now imagine a 90-year old from a tropical place where women go topless, in the sun, and have 14 children. Can you picture the breasts? I'm dealing with the 90-year old.

I grab a large glass, a measuring bowl with a lid, another rag and a clean bucket of warm water. I grab April's big teat (gently), clean it off, and attempt three times to milk it. No luck. I'm annoying her. The lamb is able to grab onto the other, smaller teat, but I fear she's not getting anything out of it. Irrationally, probably, but I'm not getting anything, so why would she?

Now it's nearly 11 a.m. I've got a lot of stuff to do today! But I'll tell you, dear reader, I don't care about any of it. If I could stay in this pasture all day, I would. If I had my land and the money to put up fences and build the proper shelter (all BEFORE I get the animals, for a change), I would fill up a pasture with sheep and cows and chickens and a few goats and a guard llama and never sit in an office ever again. I now know what I want to do with the rest of my life! And I've just signed up to do something else. I fear my new focus is ducking out of this as quickly as possible (by "quickly" I mean years, unfortunately), and getting to the land. The land! Land and animals. That's what I want.