Down Mulberry Lane

Monday Madness...

Oh it was such a nice day today!  Warm, but not as windy as yesterday, but a good breeze for laundry.  Today is laundry day and I worked on barn clothes and coats and towels and rags... I hung out what I could during the day, but still have laundry left to do... the dirty barn clothes take prewashes and soaks to get all the stains out and then a good wash after that.  They are long wash cycles.  Glad my machine works so hard for me so I can do something else.

We are up to 28 bottle lambs.  What a number.  I sat down tonight and made up a feeding chart so that we could keep track of how old and what stage of feeding to do.  Before we always just let them eat what they wanted, but they never grew good, and always were so dirty, and had messy butts... So, I started reading and found out a couple new things, so we are trying it out to see how it goes.  It seems to be going well.  Usually we are lucky for our bottle lambs to even be within 10 pounds of the lambs that were on mom (to the lighter side).  But we weighed one last night and he is nearly 20 pounds already...and a couple are bigger than their siblings still on momma ewe, so we are quite pleased.  Scours always seem to be a problem with bottle lambs for us... and this year we are treating hard for that... the lambs are getting Pepto Bismal at the first sign of the messy poops and they quickly firm back up with their stools... so perhaps that is part of it... they are able to absorb the nutrition better if they aren't having diarrhea!  Duh! 

Another change with the bottle lambs is to feed them way less.  And diluting the milk the first week.  You'd think you want to feed them as much as they want, but that always gave them scours and they never wanted to eat anything else, like hay or creep feed.  So, by feeding them less by bottle, they are looking for food, cuz they are still hungry and they are eating the hay we are offering them and eating the creep feed.  We have 5 stages of feeding and we have 7 on stage 4 and the rest are on stage 3.  Which means all are on milk 4 times a day (6 times if they are in the house (the intensive care unit) since they do not have hay or feed available at all times).  They just have different amounts at the different stages right now.  A couple are at the early part of stage three which is slowly increasing the milk dilution to full strength over about a week... but these are all in the house, so it is fairly easy to keep track of. 

Yesterday we had a lamb die from White Disease.  This was our first loss to the development of this disease.  This is a "stiff muscle" disease, caused by the selenium deficiency.  All our lambs are getting the shots, but this one came down with the disease anyways.  Once they show signs of muscle change... it is not reversible.  We saw this lamb out walking and running and hopping and an hour later, he was stiff as a board, but still alive.  Poor thing.  I guess the disease progresses until the stiffness affects the breathing or heart muscles and then they die.  It was kinda sad.  His momma and bro and sister would lay with him.  It started raining and it was like Chinese water torture... I couldn't stand it, so I put him in the barn... Mom and bro and sis followed and they stayed with him.  He would still baa for his mom, but he couldn't get up, couldn't eat.  His jaw was stiff, his legs were straight out and he couldn't move his neck or head... and it seemed to be hard for him to close his eyes.  We put a towel under his head so that the hay wouldn't poke his eye.  Awful.  I just pray this never happens again.  (the deficiency!)

We had a new mom have triplets that were all hung up together inside.  They all ended up being still born.  Two showed signs of the deficiency as they looked quite small, eyes still closed.  The other one looked fine, but was born dead... not even a heart beat.  We had to untangle the last two.  The lamb presented with just a head.  I was able to find one leg, but couldn't manage to find the other.  My daughter Kate, 17yo,  went in and checked and found a second lamb tangled up, and actually both heads were trying to present and the legs were all tangled together and behind mom's pelvis.  She pushed the second one back and untangled the legs and pulled them out, but they didn't look like they would have survived even if they were alive.  Earlier that day my daughter had been at a friends' house and she pulled two lambs for them as the husband was out of town and the wife didn't know what to do... those both survived, but then they weren't dealing with the deficiency.  Back to our momma ewe, this was her first lambing and I'm sure she's not going to have happy memories... she didn't even cry for her babies... she was probably too tired and too sore.  Sad, sad, sad. 

On a good note, we had two recent births with normal results... Lambs up within minutes and nursing.  We still gave them a shot of selenium as we aren't sure if they are over the hump, since on the same day the other ewe had apparent problems with the deficiency.  We are down to 5 ewes left to go, but dh thinks that they won't go for another two weeks according to his marking harness marks... they actually got marked twice and it's now too late for the first mark and too early for the second... so we are getting a short breather for these last few lambs.  I hope that means we will have 5 good normal births.

Well, I need to get off to bed.  Another day of cleaning awaits me for tomorrow!  

Warmly, ~Melissa

Untitled Comment

11:20 PM, March 26, 2007 .. Posted by BlueApple

I don't know how you keep up with it all! You are just amazing!
Blessings,
Julia

So sad...

8:27 AM, April 5, 2007 .. Posted by Glammon

That is so sad about the little lamb. It can be really heart breaking. We have had many trials in taking care of dd sheep while he is down and out. I will say after working for a monthe with dd's sheep, my husband and I agree we LOVE Katahdins! We have even decided to breed one of dd's rams to our ewes to get us started. Wish you the best of luck with your babies lambs and your 28 (wow!) bottle babies. We have 7 and feel overwhelmed. I can't begin to imagine how much work you have to do daily. You're doing a great job!