Mellie with twins, Snowflake and Blossom, hours after their birth, June 2022.
A few years ago, I decided I was ready to give up sheep midwifery. As much as I love the mama sheep, the babies and the always-new experience of birth, the level of care became burdensome. So, the ram was separated from the ewes, permanently, or so we thought.
You know where this is going, don’t you?
I had second thoughts about No More Babies on the farm. All that embodied cuteness in lamb form? Tough to give up. Really tough.
So, I thought rather than go cold turkey, we could gear down over time. In November, 2019, we arranged for Magnolia (Maggie) to visit the ram paddock for a couple of weeks.
Just Maggie, no other ewes. One ewe, two lambs at the most. No big deal.
By logging the breeding date and counting 145 days out, I usually have a pretty good idea of when babies will show up. And, as planned – and expected – Maggie gave us twins, Sassafras and Silas, right on schedule, spring of 2020.
At that point, I thought we were done, except for maybe another single pregnancy to be planned at some time in the future.
However…
Samantha, who had experienced three problem pregnancies (2 early miscarriages and 1 preemie who died), AND who had not, to my knowledge been on a date (or through a fence), surprised us one morning with a robust, large single ram lamb. Sonny (Sonrisa, the Spanish word for smile) was born within days of Maggie’s delivering Sass and Silas.
In the spring of 2021, by design and the fortuitous integrity of fences, there we no babies.
By summer of 2021, I was missing babies again and thought, “Our ewe, young Rai, has fully matured now…”
Plus, she had developed a lovely frame and is completely black except for a white tip on her tail. I thought Rai would make beautiful babies.
Planning for a late fall delivery, Sonny and Rai were given the opportunity to hook up in July of 2021. A few months later, Rai showed signs of an advancing pregnancy.
She delivered stillborn twins in November of 2021.
That was tough. As devastatingly cute as lambs are, the ones that don’t make it, especially those born dead are equally devastating. It’s like vulnerability on steroids.
Also tough: We don’t know why the babies died. It could have been because Sonny got into her paddock in the final weeks of her pregnancy and was a little insistent with his attention. In spite of it being November, it was warm and Rai may have overheated, making it impossible for the babies to survive.
Or it could be parasite load, or an unidentified pathogen of some kind, or even the genetic roulette wheel. We don’t know and finding out would have required considerable time and expense.
So, I thought (again): That’s it, we’re done. No more babies. Most of the ewes are aging or, like Abigail with her big abdominal hernia, have some sort of physical condition counter to safe pregnancies and deliveries.
But….In October and again November of 2021, we had a couple of fence failures, resulting in Sonny’s having two unsanctioned visits to the ewes. I watched and waited and didn’t see evidence of pregnancies within a couple of months, so thought we had dodged that bullet.
Then in late January, 2022, sweet even-tempered, mellow Sonny broke through a gate – a heavy welded gate – and scored some quality time with the ewes.
This time, we decided to go ahead with the “morning after” shots to forestall any unwanted pregnancies, not just for the health of the mothers but also because babies born after the spring grass starts to fade may not get as strong a start in life.
“Morning after” is a misnomer, at least with ruminants. The shots are administered a few weeks after exposure. This brings us well into February, ’22, in this tale.
The day we were going to round everyone up to do the shots – our barnyard version of WrestleMania, so not something we undertake lightly – Gerald noticed one of the ewes, Imelda, had developed an udder. In shepherd parlance, she had “bagged up” and appeared to be making milk, something ewes do in the last few weeks before delivery.
This would indicate that “Mellie” had, in fact, been impregnated in the October fence failure and was on track for a March delivery.
Closer inspection had us noticing big bellies on most of the other ewes. Based on appearances, Sonny had made full use of his time out.
Early March saw me go into hover mode as several of the ewes showed signs of nesting and restlessness associated with early labor. I spent hours in the barn overnight, napping in the milking room and checking throughout the wee hours.
Despite the sleep disruption and weariness, there was a sweetness about that time. The big sliding barn doors were closed due to the cold weather, with deep duff (hay for bedding) on the barn floor. The ewes made soft rustling sounds as they stirred and nested, often coming over to lean on me for back scratches. When not napping in the milk room, I dozed propped beside one of the hay ricks and listened to the soft breathing sounds of the sleeping sheep.
But…March came and went with no babies.
I wondered if that meant the ewes had gotten pregnant in the November fence failure, which would mean an April delivery, not March as Mellie’s udeer had originally led us to think.
A week into April, we still had no babies and other than Mellie, udders weren’t developing, despite all the big round bellies. Concerned we might have a pathogen at work, interfering with normal delivery, we called the vet out to do a herd check.
He performed what is known as a “baby bounce,” where you roll the ewe onto her back and palpitate the belly to see if you can feel babies.
The result? He found no clear evidence of babies, dead or alive.
He did diagnose Mellie’s swollen udder as being due to mastitis, not lactation. That was treated pharmaceutically and I let go of the notion that we had babies coming, and returned to my regular sleeping schedule.
I began cutting back on the ewes’ feed to see if they were simply “over conditioned,” livestock manager’s parlance for overweight.
May came and went with round bellies in evidence, no udder development and no signs of labor. I surrendered any expectations and hardly even crawled around the girls’ nether regions looking for indicators of approaching delivery.
And then: In early June, several ewes began to show swelling udders.
Checking the calendar, I realized pregnancies begun with Sonny’s gate crash in January would result in June babies.
My monitoring level ratcheted back up a notch. Once again, I began checking udders and nether regions a couple of times a day, and added a late-night walk through the barnyard for a final check. We moved the ewes to a grazing area adjacent to the house and secured them in a nearby paddock overnight.
Mellie was one of those who had apparently bagged up again. However, it’s a little hard to tell with her.
A few years ago, Mellie had an inflammation right after birth that led to a condition known as “hard bag” in which the mammary glands on one side were destroyed. This left her with only half a functioning udder. So, one side may fill and swell but the other remains flattened and flaccid.
Of all the ewes, Mellie is one of two I most wanted NOT to be pregnant because she’s the oldest, she’s had one problem delivery in the past when she needed assistance, and we just don’t know how well her udder will function.
So, of course you know who presented us with lambs, right?
Early on Friday morning, 17 June, Gerald came back in from morning chores before leaving for work and woke me, holding his phone toward me. I was instantly awake and on full alert. My response, as I grappled for my glasses: “Who and how many?”
Mellie had delivered twin ewe lambs in the early hours of the day. At 7 AM they were still damp.
They showed signs of trying to nurse but we weren’t sure how much milk they were getting, so over that weekend, I began bottle feeding. Also, Gerald weighed the babies daily for the first two weeks so we would be aware of any failure to thrive.
The girls have grown like weeds. They started on solid food at two weeks by 8 weeks, were weaned from bottle-feeding. They’ve integrated with the adult herd and have successfully encountered dogs, cat, chickens, guineas, peacocks and goats.
Will there be any more babies this year or next? I have no idea. Clearly there are factors at work beyond my control (so you know there’s opportunity for Growth there)(yay).
It’s been a season of uncertainty inside a larger season of uncertainties.
Our questions with the sheep (Babies or no babies? Health issues? Genetics?) are for me a mirroring of the uncertainties Life has been presenting over the past few years.
As we’ve navigated our way through the unfamiliar landscape of a pandemic amid US political drama, supply chain issues on a scale many of us now living have never experienced, and some scary economic indicators, it appears Life is calling us to get serious about developing our capacities for meeting not just uncertainty, but compounding uncertainties.
Here is the funny thing about uncertainty: Our brains don’t like it.
When we experience uncertainty, it can escalate a need to feel in control. The more out of control we feel, the more we may scramble to restore at least the illusion of control.
I’ve had to check myself to see if I’m trying to “push the river” – or go into control mode – either with having lambs or not having lambs. Or even trying to manage the birthing experience for the ewes to the point that I attempt to control risk factors.
Somewhere between indifference and obsessiveness, there’s a space of balance – and, to add to uncertainty (oh, yay) – that place is dynamic and situational, rather than being a comfortably known, fixed place.
I’m realizing lambing – and my relationship with it – are microcosms of something much larger taking place in human history:
- What might we be collectively birthing?
- If so…is it a baby that will be viable? Will it be a breech birth; will it be deformed?
- How do we get it here? When will it be here and what will it look like? How will we nurture it?
And friend, Maralyn Cale’s reminder question:
What is mine to hold in all of this?
Just as I’ve realized it is not sustainable (or loving) for me to ask my body to forego sleep and hold the burden of sheep midwifery at this point in my life, I’m looking at what is mine to hold, to tend and nurture, at this point in humanity’s collective journey.
What is mine to hold? What is yours? What is ours to hold together?
Life continues to call us to build the capacities needed for meeting uncertainty in life-affirming ways (vs. reactive need to control). In ways that ask us to step out of old, unconscious narratives that perpetuate the messages of Yesterday’s Culture, namely Control-Conquer-Dominate.
One last thought:
What if, what looks like an unraveling of what has been known and familiar, is instead an unfolding of new possibilities?
What might be the metaphorical lambs we are laboring together to bring into the world, even as we may not yet recognize and understand the labor or what is being birthed?
The adventure continues…
