Let Sheep Be Sheep

Where to begin?  In three weeks we lambed out nearly three times as many sheep as we’ve ever lambed and it was actually easy.  Or more accurately, it was uncomplicated.  It was challenging in the way most new practices are and the week of unseasonable cold and unrelenting rain did unfortunately find my old reversing hypothermia skills via intraperitoneal glucose and tube feedings useful.  That week was not fun for anyone but when I look at how many lambs didn’t need my help despite the unseasonably harsh weather it’s still an sure success.  I am exhausted of course and perhaps a bit shell-shocked by the constant arrival of new lambs with new decisions to be made in a new system.  To coast on autopilot isn’t an option anymore and all of the second-hand knowledge in the world will never completely prepare you for that much newness.   We’ve learned a few new husbandry tricks already (hobbles, leg crooks, some version of drift lambing) and a lot about what kind of creature sheep really are.  How wild does this sound?  I feel like I am seeing my flock for the first time.

Lambing began one day ahead of schedule (those rascals never do read the text books) with a beautiful, I mean stunning, little single ewe lamb out of a home-bred yearling.  Little back story; “Dew Drop” as she and her sister are called (I can’t tell them apart) is damned by the last ewe of my original flock of Cheviots and sired by a Finn.  But she acts all Cheviot.  Last year, I saw her mother was in labor and gave her oh thirty odd minutes alone, came back to two perky lambs and began the standard procedure of scooping them up and bringing them to a jug with mom.  But these under-thirty-minute-old lambs outran me!  Normally you scoop up fresh babies, mom follows and like magic everyone gets to the jug but these buggers would not be caught.  In that humbling moment two thoughts crossed my mind: even half Cheviots are not really interested in what we silly humans think they need and this pasture lambing stuff might just work.

Now, when one of those half Cheviots has presented us with the most beautiful lamb one year later we were faced with a dilemma by not jugging like we used to.  “Nannying” is when another ewe interferes with the bonding between dam and lambs by trying to claim them as her own.  The intense mothering drive we want to see in good ewes can go a little too far.  An older Finn ewe in early labor was budding in on the new mother.  Colin and I looked at each other with a mutual, “well, what can we do?” and let them be.  Worst case scenario, the nanny ewe physically steals the new lamb and drives the real mother off which becomes a problem when the nanny ewe then gives birth to her biological lambs and suddenly has her hands (udder) too full.  But Dew Drop was fully committed to this lamb. We hoped the Finn would deliver her own lambs overnight and her priorities would be sorted out.

Lambing is best known for reminding you of the stark but quiet contrast between living and not.  The next morning we found Dew Drop curled up with her perfect lamb, the Finn near by, and the Finn’s three lambs all dead and abandoned.  Actually we caught the Finn and had to help deliver the third - a dead and slightly rotten fetus to help us diagnose some abortive disease that caused the unproductive situation we faced.  The other two lambs looked normal but one dead fetus can alter the concentrations of essential birthing hormones, slowing down labor to the point the lambs weren’t able to make it out alive.  It’s tragic, it’s all natural, it’s something to always factor in statistically at lambing.  The difference from years past was the Finn, an exceptional and proven mother, wasn’t visibly upset.  Most ewes when they deliver dead lambs still want them and it looked like this ewe did make an attempt to get her first two lambs up.  Their instincts to protect and feed aren’t shut off just because the lamb doesn’t raise it’s head and I’ve pulled dead lambs away from plenty of ewes before, heartbroken.  But without jugs to separate every new family and us humans there hovering all night, this Finn was able to recognize on her own that her lambs would not need her and go find place for her mothering instincts elsewhere.

I’m not saying nannying is a desirable or unproblematic behavior by any means. We kept an eye on this family unit of three all day to make sure Dew Drop wasn’t run off and the Finn wasn’t overbearing. Lucky for us, it worked out and the Finn just followed them around for a week or so until she decided to go about things on her own again.  Just a week later one lamb did die because of a big confusing lambing scenario with five lambs born between three ewes and lots of mixing of placental fluids despite plenty of room to spread out.  That was nannying in a worst-case scenario so please don’t take this as a promotion of the behavior.  We have had a few more late term abortions with ewes who I could observe like the first and I’ve got to say, they are far less distraught than what I’ve seen in the barn.  There are two new factors I believe help.  The first being, we’re still grazing.  A new pasture is opened up daily and the sheep know the pattern.   Ewes with the youngest lambs lag behind in the older pasture until the fresh wobbly legs are working well enough to slowly move up towards the front of the flock.  At varying speeds, the flock is still on the move all the time.  I can’t tell you how much a ewe understands about life and death but she does understand fresh feed is always ahead and that she cannot tend her lambs while starving herself.  There is a certain amount of self preservation in all of these ewes, even the ones with the strongest mothering instincts and in this pastured system, where the best quality feed is ahead and the scenery is always changing they will leave their dead lambs behind.  Unlike in our old winter lambing system, I’m not removing the dead lambs and leaving the ewe with nowhere to go.  We’re not skipping the jugging procedure and letting her circle the barn crying for something that is lost.  On pasture, they’re able to keep moving forward with their flock and figure out their lambs aren’t coming with them.  Additionally, when a fresh lamb is born, often a small crowd will from to help clean it off.  A few ewes who lost their lambs but birthed near another ewe with healthy ones have entered into a sort of co-parenting agreement and or done their own grafting.  Some ewes aren’t full blown nannies but are seen following around a specific ewe with her lambs watching over them without outright claiming them.  And a couple ewes have stolen a fresh twin or triplet, in an instance when nannying doesn’t do any harm.  I’d rather two ewes raise singles than one ewe raise twins and one have nothing. 

I don’t want to anthropomorphize too strongly here.  I don’t believe these animals know grief the same way we do - they are far less removed from the natural cycles of life and death than us and I don’t believe death rocks their world like it can ours.  But after they carry lambs to term and successfully deliver them, they have a desire to follow through with the next steps.  Their swollen udder and the small bleat of a wet lamb calls them to a job for the next couple of months.  Without the immediate human intervention I’m still inclined towards, ewes who have lost lambs can take in the situation on their own terms.

This could all be incredibly naive of us.  Maybe we’re pasture lambing poorly and my Finns (the main culprit of nannying behavior) will prove a liability to the flock.  Come back in four years and let me tell you what I think about it with some credible experience under my belt.  All our human errors aside, there is a shift in the flock that’s undeniable.  We’ve had the whole spectrum - from perfect text-book lambing to dystocias that needs a pull, triplets and quads that are asking too much of these ewes, lambs born alive that couldn’t make it in the conditions and ones that were never able to exist outside the womb but for all of the ups and downs there is a calm that’s come over the flock.  Before, during, after a lamb is born it’s like nothing happened.  I can’t accurately describe now normal they all act, like it’s just another day in the life of being a sheep.  There is no moving anxious moms to jugs away from her birthing space, away from her flock, alone in a sterilized pen.  There’s no one wrangling with her udder, her lambs navels, delivering the feed we think she needs, putting on artificial coats and heat.  I’ll be the first to admit this hands-off way lets a few more lambs die.  It also means a few twin and triplet lambs that would have managed just fine in a jug and under a roof end up artificially reared instead.  We have quite the crew of bucket lambs!  It’s also fair I admit the Finns and Border Leicesters from our original flock have been less successful than the Cheviots and crossbreds.  When I hear, “my sheep could never do that” I believe you, I’m witnessing it in some of my own ewes and it does deepen the small crack in my heart that wants to hold onto the old way, what we did so well and raised that original flock to do.  I can also admit that we created that dependency.  Our sheep only do what we ask of them, no more.  Generations of unquestioned intervention creates an animal unable to bring it’s own young into the world without human-made contraptions and agreed upon timings.  When I think about the future of my farm and my flock, I want something that relies on me as little as possible.  I want the land and the livestock to coexist in a way that’s sustainable for both of them.  Not without me, but without my micromanaging.  Without my thinking I always know better than the other natural forces at play.

The crux of this pasture lambing thing, for better and worse, is to let them be.  Watch from a distance and do less.  We’ve pulled a couple of too-big lambs, hobbled a set of twins that just wouldn’t stay close to mom, pulled triplets to rear on a bucket, and generally don’t walk away to just let something die if we can help it.  On a few occasions we didn’t intervene when we should have and more than a few times we intervened too much.  This is a new balancing act of responsibilities to the flock but along with it deeper respect for what they are capable of.  We must set them up for success with the right feed, water, protection from predators.  But I’m reveling in the early results of the lesson I’ve absorbed.  Let sheep be sheep.