The Soay Sheep Chronicles

Now comes the fun part, working with our lambs instead of endlessly talking about them!

I already used up the “every picture tells a story” line, so let’s just say one of our cooperative new lambs and my trusty digital camera will show you how we work our newborns.   Remember the Lambing Kit?  As soon as our first lamb arrived, the L.K. swung into action.

These pictures star Amado, a twin American ram born last week.  Ready?  Here we go.

Setting the stage:  Steve sits down on the folding camp stool in a small enclosure, picks up Amado, and waits a couple of minutes while mama ewe Willow gets accustomed to sharing her lamb.  The goal is to do everything calmly.  As soon as Steve upends Amado, we learn he is a ram.  I run the portable database (i.e., the lamb card), entering what “lambing” it is, date and estimated time of birth, date of working, gender, etc.

A little KY or vaseline on the thermometer

and voilá - in goes the thermometer.  Do you think the look on Amado’s face suggests he knows what’s coming?  Yuk.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, you need not take a healthy lamb’s temperature.  We do it because we are numbers nuts and also to confirm what the lower end of our “healthy” range is so we will have an indicator of when we have a lamb in trouble.  Amado’s temperature was 102.5 F; he clearly had gorged himself  before we worked him about 9 hours after he was born.

Next Steve puts in the baby eartag, two little bitty pieces of green plastic stamped with a number and applied with a task-specific tool that looks like a paper punch.  We get these tags from a supplier in the U.K. and they are really useful.  They allow us to identify our lambs immediately, preventing any possibility of mixup.  If you are the keeper of the Open Flockbook Project, as Steve is, it simply will not do to mix up lambs.   The little white strap around Steve’s fingers is neither a lamb tether nor a designer collar; it holds the arms of the applicator together in the Lamb Kit to prevent iodine spills and general chaos.

By informal convention, Soay rams have adult Scrapie eartags in their right ears, so Amado’s baby tag goes in his left ear and will stay there even after we install his adult tag (right) when he gets his first tetanus shot at 8 to 10 weeks.  More on ear tags and the federal Scrapie programs in a later post. 

I forgot to take a picture of Amado getting his BoSe and vitamin shots, but that’s the next step in the process.

Then into the sling goes the lamb for weighing.   The scale above is a Rapala fish scale, 50-pound capacity, and the sling below it probably came from Jeffers.  I plan to talk about lamb and adult weights in a later post, so for now let’s just say it is a completely optional step in the process.  If you are new to Soay, let me put Amado’s weight in perspective.  He weighed 4 pounds 11 ounces at the age of 9 hours.  That’s a half gallon of milk and change.  When people brag about their easily-handled Soay, they mean it.  These sheep are small. 

The only part that sometimes upsets the lamb is The Dipping Of The Cord.  Remember the “ahem” caution I gave you in the iodine posting earlier?  As you can see, with ram lambs your aim has to be good:  Steve’s middle finger points to the umbilical cord, his ring finger points to the little guy’s tiny pink penis.

We take one final precaution before we turn the lamb(s) and ewe loose to do a ceremonial turn around the Maternity Ward.  Also not a mandatory procedure, but certainly sound husbandry, we give a shot of BoSe to the new mama for good measure, just in case she became selenium deficient with her in utero lamb filching it from her.  Pressing the ewe to your chest as Steve is doing in this picture eliminates the need to plop the ewe on her rear, the conventional way of working a sheep, when her vulva and her udder are still very tender and vulnerable.

Here is Amado reuniting with Willow in a fun bunch of fresh straw we had put out for Venus (remember Venus, she of the broken leg?).

And to complete the storybook, here are Amado and his twin brother Arivaca headed up to the feeder so mom can get refueled before refueling the twins.

See why we use eartags to identify our lambs?  Can you tell Amado and Arivaca apart?  We can’t unless we pick them up and check their numbers. 

For now …

Dousing a newborn lamb’s umbilical cord in iodine as soon as possible after birth is an inexpensive way to guard against infection. Later when our lambs go back out into the pasture, they have to fend for themselves as far as scrapes and cuts go; it is not cost-effective to treat them for everything. But at the outset, when the raw cord and navel are exposed and the lamb is lying down all the time, it just makes sense to apply iodine.

We strongly recommend 7% iodine, much stronger than what you will find on display at grocery stores and pharmacies, but necessary for the dousing to be effective in the unavoidably unsanitary conditions of a lambing area. An aside: In Jackson County where we live, we have to sign for 7% iodine at the Grange (farm supply store), apparently because it can be used in meth production. They didn’t teach us that in the good old days, did they?

The applicator of choice is a contraption with the show-stopping name of “teat dipper.” Don’t believe me? Google the term and you will find pages and pages of hits for dairy cattle supply catalogs and stores. We just call it a “dipper.” Less to explain when someone drops by while we are working a lamb.

The dipper is a great invention, if sheep equipment gets your pulse going. It has a nifty hook on one side so you can hook it over the side of the Lamb Kit container and it will not tip over and spill (Big Lie #1). It also has a round cup-like opening you can press right against the lamb’s belly (or the cow’s teat if that is what you are using it for), again to prevent spills (BL #2). You can see the dipper in the Lamb Kit container in my earlier post introducing the Lamb Kit. Ours came from the Premier Sheep Supply catalog but I promise you can find them anywhere two or more dairy tools are gathered together.

Put some iodine in the dipper, no need to fill it full. Gather the umbilical cord into the opening of the dipper so the cord will get drenched with iodine. Place the round side opening of the dipper firmly against the lamb’s belly and then turn the lamb over so the iodine gets on the navel as well as the cord. Count to 3, turn the lamb right side up, and voila! All the iodine will drain back into the dipper (BL #3), where it stays put until time to disinfect the next lamb (BL #4). It is completely reusable.

Hmmm, how to say this discretely.  If you are working a ram lamb, be careful to capture only the cord in the dipper or you will have a seriously wriggling and even more seriously unhappy lamb on your hands. 

Should you have the misfortune of spilling iodine on your hands at any point in this process (go back and review Big Lies #1-4), through either innate clumsiness or a well-placed lamb kick or whatever, you will have a bright orange stain and it will sting like the devil.  You should have worn your blue gloves!  It will look dreadful. You will be convinced your days of balancing sheep chores with manicures in town are over. But trust me (BL #5?) the stain will come off if you apply rubbing alcohol promptly. The quicker you pour alcohol on it, the more comes off.  Note to self: probably not a bad idea to add a bottle of rubbing alcohol to the Lamb Kit.

As for your clothes, they too will look dreadful, but not all that different from the effect placental goo, lamb poop, adult sheep lanolin (aged), or a variety of other substances have on your coveralls.  After all, isn’t this why we wear them even though they are the single most unflattering garment ever invented?  Although I still find it hard to believe, every time one of us has spilled iodine on our clothes they came clean in the wash. And no, I am not going to write a post on recommended laundry products for shepherds. Life is too short already.

Perhaps, however, once lambing starts I will add a photo demonstrating the application of iodine for your amusement. Last year at this time I had no idea I would be doing a blog, so taking pictures of teat dippers was the farthest thing from my mind.

For now …