Quarantine Day 7: New Life

Last night, long after the sun went down, as we went to complete our nightly chores and milkings, we looked into one of our sheep pens and noticed one of our Mamas not looking so hot.

She was laying on her side, big belly in the air, panting and just looking, well, …off.

Dave quickly jumped the fence to see what was wrong. Since we had just had a false alarm the night before (more on that in a bit), I didn’t think too much of it and kept on with my nightly mucking. Horses are wonderful animals, but MAN DO THEY EVER MAKE A MESS! But that quickly changed as Dave called, “Uhh, she’s in labour!”

Sure, sure, I thought.

“No really, I can see hooves!”

Suddenly, we were running from all directions, completely ignoring our sheep’s need for privacy, to watch the miracle of life. Mama strained through the contractions, and soon, a perfect, pure white baby was nestled in the straw next to her. We held our breath to see what would happen next. ‘Would she be a good Mama? Would she take care of her young?’

Within a few seconds, she was licking her little baby boy. Her first was a son!

She got up and started wandering around, allowing her baby to shakily stand and come up to her for feeding. Hooray!

I quickly went to replenish her hay and water, (and to start feeding some of the other animals that were complaining they were receiving far less attention than her) when Dave called again saying a new baby was appearing, but this one only had one foot and a head appearing. I ran back and told Dave we needed to get that other leg out or that baby wasn’t going anywhere smoothly.

She was at least in the right position, just one of her legs was squished behind her.

We, quickly, reached in, found the hoof and gently cupped and pulled it out. Thankfully, it came easily and the baby just slid out the rest of the way. A sweet, pure black, curly haired little girl.

We waited a little while longer (at this point it was nearly midnight), and realized she was finished. We went inside, happily, with two new babies laying in the straw next to Mama in the barn. We set an alarm to check on them a couple of times in the night, just to be sure.

The next morning we woke up exhausted, but excitedly checked on the little babies. There they were in their pen with Mama, happily snoozing in the straw. Lambing season suddenly didn’t seem so hard. We could do this.

We went inside, made a huge breakfast and came out to check on the animals, feed and water, milk… the regular.

I hopped inside the pen with the babies, and they immediately cuddled up on my lap.

That’s when I noticed one of our pregnant goats was acting,… strangely. I informed Dave we had more incoming, but this Mama looked like she might be a little while still.

We set alarms every few hours to go and check her progress, but, tried to leave the soon-to-be-first-time-Mom to it.

At about 10 o’clock at night, we knew she was finally getting close. Her water had finally broken, and we sat waiting for the cute, sweet, baby to be born.

We waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

After about 2 and a half hours after her water broke, and no movement (nor contractions or anything) we knew something was wrong.

We had read up on the birthing process of goats and sheep. We had a rough idea of what we were doing, but really, unless you have experienced it first hand, you have no idea what you are doing. And we had no idea what we were doing.

Google and the books seemed to agree though, after that amount of time with no action, it was past time to pull.

After the water breaks, the baby moves down the birth canal and (hopefully) gets into the right position. As we assessed the situation, we realized, this was not what had occurred. The little baby was upside down, with one leg pinned back. Try as we might, we couldn’t reach the second leg to cup it and pull it forward. Unfortunately, the best we could do was to pull, and then twist the shoulders past the pelvis. Finally, after an awful lot of straining, the baby come out, alive.

We bundled him up and brought him straight in the house (as our Mother goat, unfortunately, had been through too much to start showing any sign of interest in Motherhood). We warmed him and plied him with colostrum, but by the end of the night he passed away. Thankfully, I am happy to report, Mama is doing alright.

I know sometimes in lambing, it is a win some, loose some business, but we can’t help but be disappointed when we loose.

So for now, we will celebrate our victories and the ones we could save, and work on learning all we can, so next time around, maybe we can save some more.