Firsts: Part 2

Sunday morning I was, once again, determined to take my day off - I needed to cook a dish for a potluck with my choir before our small concert in the evening. That coupled with the time change meant I was feeling pressed for time. But when E came in from morning chores, he commented that the sheep Josie looked like she was going into labor. Soon after, Laura started going into labor. I got a running commentary from A & E as I worked in the kitchen trying to throw something together for the potluck - Laura had first one lamb, then another, and finally A came in and said point-blank "If you want to see a lamb born, come out now because it looks like Laura's got a third coming."

I'd been not-so-secretly hoping I'd get to be there for the birth of at least one of the lambs, but with our growing herd of darlings it was looking less and less likely. So I left a pot to simmer and went outside into the warm, teasingly spring-like day. I joined A & E in the sheep house, where we quietly watched Laura in her pen, licking her two big lambs and turning in circles. Under her wide, woolly tail two water balloons were dangling - one amniotic sack for her second lamb, and the other meant a third was coming. A & E whispered this information to me; we leaned against the mangers and waited and watched.

Laura's second ewe lamb was damp and just-born; we watched her struggle to her feet, skinny legs quivering at this brand-new job. She nosed around her mother's belly the best she could, and finally found the udder. Laura nuzzled her butt and then started licking the air, mother instincts clearly kicked in but still in some distress. Finally, after about a half hour of waiting, she sat her back legs down, and E pointed out the tiny black nose and feet coming out. Then, with no fuss at all, she pushed out a third lamb, born inside a sack of its own. I had never seen anything be born before, and this small, new life was miraculous. Just as soon as I realized I had actually witnessed my first birth, E climbed into the jug and pulled the birth sack off the lamb. It was neither breathing nor moving. He cleaned out its mouth and nose, tried giving it mouth-to-mouth. The jug was cramped with ewe and lambs; E lifted it out where he could have more space.

This lamb's body was permanently prepared for birth: wet, stream-lined, boneless, front legs together and still pointed for its dive into the world. Soon after birth, a lamb ought to breath, open its eyes, struggle to its feet, and morph from a limp, wet rag into a tiny sheep, with the muscles and bones of knees and ankles and neck all working to hold their bodies in sheep shape. But not this one. It was perfectly formed, but it never breathed and never woke up. Laura never looked at it.

I did. I don't know why it died, although we had another still-born lamb later that day, again from a set of triplets. Three lambs is a lot for sheep. But after Laura and Josie carried these lambs for five months, nourishing them in their bellies and then bringing them into the world, to then lose them was such a waste.

A & E have been through this before, and E took the utilitarian outlook - at least we wouldn't have the chore of feeding a bottle lamb, because a ewe often can't feed a third lamb; we'd take them down to the woods and leave them for the coyotes because the ground is still too frozen to dig. And keeping genetics in the flock that predispose ewes to have a third still-born lamb isn't ultimately good for the flock. But A&E know the stakes. We've talked about how farming is fundamentally stewardship of plant and animal life, and part of that is having an understanding that death is a part of life and so being able and willing to grant a clean and quick death when appropriate. More on this later.

So that lamb's was the first birth I'd ever witnessed, and also the first death. This may be connected to the fact that I then got my first speeding ticket later that day. Ca c'est la vie.