Prequel to the Orphanage

It is usually still dark when I awake each morning.

I lie in bed, attempting to anticipate and mitigate potential chaos.

Some days, I fail.

A few days ago, I strolled to the corral at daylight, peered into the sheep lambing pen and started counting newborns.

Usually counting isn’t hard. The new mothers huddle over their babies as an island, silent, away from the sea of the flock.

Typically, a ewe can count high enough to keep track of her offspring. She tucks her twins under her belly, allowing them to nurse and protecting them from harm.

This morning was different.

Dawn was noisy.

Ewes and lambs huddled as maternal islands, but the same number of still-pregnant ewes hovered around them, nudging newborns, circling the true mothers, bleating in confusion and angst.

Raging hormones declared that these Auntie Ewes, as they are known in the industry, were the rightful mothers of new lambs whether they were still pregnant or not.

Instinctively, the lambs followed anyone and everyone.

The true mothers claimed the lambs, too, but panicked because they knew they had another one somewhere. Where did she leave it?

As a mother, I know that feeling.

Theoretically, I could split lamb ownership among the real mothers and the Auntie Ewes, but that would cause problems later when more lambs appeared on the scene.

I wrestled what I thought to be real families into small pens and then wrestled raging maternal hormones and the Auntie Ewes out. Each of them attempted to jump gates, sneak into the barn or call a newborn to them in an effort to reclaim her unauthorized family.

Chaos reigned.

By the time the real families were tucked in safe straw, some of the ewes had forgotten how many lambs they were supposed to claim.

A ewe won’t let a lamb nurse unless it smells like her. Instead, she head-butts the newborn lamb against the wall of the pen.

Over and over.

It’s hard to survive, much less nurse, when you get body-slammed regularly.

Two ewes weren’t sure about the occupants of their pen. The lambs didn’t smell quite right, like a beloved heirloom tomato that is overripe.

After all, an Auntie Ewe had licked and cleaned some of the lambs, changing their scent.

But a mother’s milk impacts a lamb’s scent.

All I needed to do was get the lamb to nurse the ewe for a couple of days and she would accept the lamb.

I have a head-catch that helps convince a ewe to allow a lamb to nurse.

It doesn’t look very comfortable.

Neither does a head-butt against the wall.

More wrestling matches yielded two ewes in stockades and four lambs enjoying an open buffet.

I set water and hay in front of each stockade and avoided guilty eye contact with the ewes.

The Salem Witch Trials kept flashing through my mind.

A couple of days later, I figured the lambs might smell like the captured ewes so I loosened the stockades.

Each ewe nuzzled both babies and the lambs jumped up to find their faucets.

All seemed well.

Until the next day when it was time to join the other new families in a mixer pen.

As the former prisoners sauntered toward their play date group, they acted indifferent toward one of their twins, not head-butting violent, but ambivalent.

This was a bad sign.

The play-date group was an intermediary step toward grazing on open range, where a protective maternal attitude is critical to lamb survival.

I made a preventative strike.

I now feed two bum lambs every four hours.

They might die on my watch, but at least they will eat.

And I promise I won’t head-butt them.

Happy Mother’s Day.