Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [50]
Every trip to the lambing barn was charged with anticipation. As we looked over the flock, we listened for the sounds of labor or a newborn bleat. The animals were settled, resting like woolly boulders with their legs folded and hooves tucked beneath their bodies. If you stood in the quiet, you could hear them working their cud. Audible human mastication drives me nuts in a split second, but for some reason I find the sound of sheep chewing a soothing nocturne. An animal in distress does not bring up a cud, and all that muffled molar work—with regular pauses to swallow one bolus and bring up another—sends a subliminal message of contentment. When I was young I would climb the haystack into the rafters, then curl up and simply listen.
Tonight I hear an infantile bleat before I reach the barn, and when I straddle the fence and cross to the straw, I find a young ewe lying on her side and straining. She has one hind leg in the air like a roast turkey. There is a fresh-born lamb beside her, and as I approach, she presses out another. Arriving in a slithery amniotic gush, it plops wetly to the straw. Encircling its nose with my fingers, I milk its nostrils and mouth clear of fluid, then stand back to watch its ribs bow in and out as the first hacking breaths transpire. By the time it shakes its ears loose (this always reminds me of an accelerated version of the emergent butterfly uncrinkling its wet wings after escaping the chrysalis) I am experiencing the standard moment of marvel at how the whole deal works. The ewe has turned, snuffling and chuckling as she licks the amniotic fluid away, roughing and fluffing the tight wool curls so they can air-dry. As usual, the other sheep ignore the goings-on, with the occasional exception of the yearling ewes. Having never given birth, they sometimes sniff the lambs or the hind end of the laboring ewe curiously, their ears cocked forward in a mixture of curiosity and alarm as they nose the amniotic sac dangling like a water balloon.
Dad keeps a baby food jar filled with iodine in the barn, and I retrieve it now, removing the cap and lifting each lamb so I can thread the umbilicus into the ruby liquid. I do it the way I remember Dad doing it, clapping the jar tightly against the lamb’s belly, then tipping both back simultaneously so the umbilicus gets a good soak, a practice intended to prevent navel ill. The lamb is left with a circular orange stain on its abdomen. In a week or so the umbilicus will turn to jerky and eventually drop unnoticed to the straw.
By the time I have finished with the two lambs, the ewe has gone to pushing again. I ease around behind her. I’m hoping to see a pair of soft hoof tips cradling a little lamb snoot. The hooves are there, sure enough, but they are dewclaws-up, and there is no snoot. Bad sign. These are the back legs. Breech delivery. I hustle back to the house and wake Mom. Dad has always shouldered the bulk of the lambing chores, but defers to my mother for tricky deliveries. She comes armed with delivery-room experience and delicate hands. Dad’s hands are not overlarge, but they have a sausagey thickness brought on by manual labor and are therefore poorly suited for navigating obstetrical tangles.
I get back to the barn before Mom and find the ewe panting with the lamb half out—its head, shoulders and front legs still lodged in the birth canal. It appears there is no time to wait, so I grab the lamb and pull it the rest of the way out. Its head is still inside the amniotic sac. I clear the nostrils and mouth, but there is no breath. I give a couple of pushes on the ribs and dangle the lamb by its back legs, which looks drastic but allows fluid to drain from