Viveka's lambing

Friday, April 25th was the date that Viveka decided to start lambing.  It was early afternoon when she finally got down to active labor.  First thing that happened was the bag broke with lots of fluid.  I'd never saw that much fluid come out prior to a lamb being born.  After about a half hour of active pushing, nothing was proceeding, so I applied some super lube to my hand and reached in to see what was happening.  I could feel the head and from the feel of it, the baby was completely upside down as the throat was up and I could feel the ears below.  I searched around for a leg and found one, pulling it forward.  I then searched for the second front leg and couldn't find it, so I went back to the first front leg.  Unfortunately, it had reverted back to where it was when I found it.  I attempted to turn the baby's head around so that the presentation was a bit more normal and searched for that leg again.  At this point the head was in the pubic region, so I did what I could to get the head to pass beyond her hips.  Finally, the head was presenting and I kept reaching in to find the front legs.  Still no luck keeping the front leg forward, so I began putting steady pressure on her head.  During this time, I had called to speak to one of our vets and was waiting for a call back, since this would be my first solo assisting of a birth.  I was able to get the head out and kept pressure on the head until a good portion of the lambs neck was out.  I tried again to get that front leg out and was able to get it out, but it hooked around her vaginal opening weirdly.  With steady pressure on the head and one front leg, I was finally able to get the shoulder area to pass and finally the rest of the baby passed as well.  I brought the baby to Viv to get it cleaned up and remarked to myself that the baby had some good horn buds ... typical.  Last time she bred she ended up giving us boys and the first was full on butt breach!  The lamb's front legs looked a bit weird and I tried straightening them with no luck.  Here's a shot of what they looked like, hopefully you can see that they're tucked in a C shape.

Soon after the lamb was fully birthed, I got the call back from my vet.  I told her about how the baby presented weirdly, but I was able to get it out, but that the front legs looked kind of weird.  She said that it could be that they were just a bit stiff from being in one position for a while (similar to my ram lamb from the first birthing that had a loose hip joint).   She also suggested that it could be a disease known as arthrogryposis, but that she wasn't willing to say that was what it was without seeing the lamb first.  She suggested I continue to try to straighten the legs and get the twin out and if the legs wouldn't straighten, then I'd need to bring the lamb into the clinic for a looking over.  If it was the disease, then the lamb would need to be put down as there is no fix for this disease and the lamb wouldn't be able to walk.  I went back to mom and baby and found that the baby had passed away while I was on the phone with the vet.  

Next thing to worry about was the second lamb.  I waited for her to get back down to brass tacks and luckily for me the second presented well and came out fine with virtually no assistance from me (front legs not full on superman, so I gave them a tug and they popped into full superman mode).  

Another boy.

Once the second lamb was out, I contacted the vet and told her that the first lamb had passed and I wanted them to look at his front legs, so I drove over to their clinic.  Unfortuantely for us, the diagnosis was that the lamb had arthrogryposis.  

"Arthrogryposis, congenital fixation of multiple joints, has been reported to result from infectious, toxic and genetic causes.  Affected animals have severely flexed forelimbs and overextended hind limbs.  A spiral deviation of the spine also is evident"  According to the book "Sheep & Goat Medicine" by D.G. Pugh and N. Baird.  My vet also mentioned that sometimes the jaw is affected (in this case the fore and hind limbs were affected, but not the spine or jaw).  

The vet suggested that I could have the lamb sent off and be tested, but I wanted Tim to see what the lamb looked like so she suggested we place the lamb in a garbage bag and place it in our freezer.  This will help us in two points: 1) By keeping the body we're less likely for it to happen again (you know Murphy's Law and all) and 2) if it does happen again this year, we still have the body for sampling purposes.  When Tim got home, I showed him the lamb who passed and his first thought was that it was a black based katmoget.  I hadn't really looked at the coloration of the lamb as I was so focused on not losing the mother and getting the lamb out that it hadn't occurred to me that he was a katmoget.  This loss is sad for a few reasons.  We do not plan on breeding Viveka again as she has turned 10 years old and since we've not kept a katmoget from any of her or her sisters breedings, we have not retained the pattern.  If we want another kat, we'll have to purchase one.  Secondly, of all the breedings, this is the first time we've got a black based katmoget only for it to not survive due to problems.

It's at these times that I have to look at the big picture.  Viveka is alive due to my intervention and she still has a lamb to take care of since the second is perfectly healthy and gaining weight.  Add to that the knowledge that I've gained with assisting a birth and this new to me disease and I feel better armed to handle another birthing issue (even if I'm hoping I never have another problem again!)

Waiting for the next sheep to lamb.

Lambing trials and tribulations

Lambing started with Ingrid, a first timer, giving birth to twins on Thursday, April 12, one day earlier than the beginning of lambing was due to start. Usually that is not anything to be concerned about, but this was not good. She looked as if she was only going to lamb a singleton, but she lambed twins, a ram and a ewe! They were both very small (ram was 3 lbs and the ewe was 2.6 lbs). the ram lamb was acting strange as he was walking in circles and didn't have the desire to suckle. The ewe lamb was able to suckle with assistance and although it looked as if she was blind, we figured we could handle that. By morning, the ram lamb had passed away and later that afternoon, closer to early evening, I found the ewe lamb flopping around like a fish out of water. We called the vet and found out that she was having seizures. We took her to the vet to euthanize her. It was one of the saddest trips I ever took to the vets office as she was having seizures every few minutes. According to the vet, the neurological problems were due to the fact that they were premature.

The next one to lamb was Alendil, another first timer, who on Saturday, April 14, gave birth to a singleton ram lamb. A beautiful white ram lamb with some splashy fawn-like spots on his one ear and a few splashes on his derrière.

Sunday, April 15, found us with another first timer lambing. Astrid also did great with her birthing and gave us a beautiful singleton ewe lamb. This girl is just adorable with the splashy face and gulmoget markings. I have thus far nicknamed her peanut.

Tuesday, April 17, came the day we were waiting for. Viveka, AKA the Goodyear blimp, started to "till" the ground. Hooray, she was in the first stage of labor. We were waiting with anticipation to see if she would give what we guessed was triplets all alive (last time she gave birth to triplets, one was stillborn). By 2:00pm, she moved into the second stage of labor, lying down and trying to push. By 3:30pm, nothing had progressed at all. She continued to push with nothing presenting itself. After talking to Tim, who thought I was overreacting, I called the vet. The call was either to put my mind at ease or to confirm my concerns. The vet said that something was wrong and that we needed to have a farm visit vet of the day come out to assess the situation. Long story short, we ended up having to take her to the vets office in the back of our horse trailer. Susan at Riverbend Vet Clinic examined her and found she had a condition known as ringwomb. She mentioned some of the options for fixing the problem and started to work on the most non-invasive option, manually manipulating the cervix. After a time of slowly stretching, she was able to feel the lamb and discovered that he was breech (butt coming first). She pulled him out and showed me an interesting method for getting fluid out of a lamb by letting gravity work for us. That lamb was a ram, who quickly got the name of Loki (Norse God of mischief). The second lamb started to show as soon as Loki started to nurse. This lamb was a normal presentation, but was also helped out of the birth canal. After he was born, Susan checked for another to find out that she had no more lambs left. They were a little bit bigger than normal twins at birth, and since she had triplets once before, she had plenty of room for those boys to grow! Each boy was moorit with white splashes. The second one to be born, Thor, has some white lightening bolt marks on each side.

We did try grafting a lamb from Viveka, but by that time, Ingrid had no interest in mothering any lambs and just wanted to spend her time butting heads with the other younger maiden ewes. We will try breeding her again this fall to make sure that the premature lambing was just a fluke, like Viveka's ringwomb (this was her fourth time lambing and each previous time there was no issue).

The very next morning, Wednesday, April 18, Tim found Sage (the oldest carrying lambs - 10 years old) had given birth to twin ewe lambs. Both girls were black with a few white splashes on them. At this point, four out of five ewes had given birth in the span of a week. This is a bit unusual for our farm, as they are usually fairly well spaced out.

The last holdout, Freya, gave birth on April 26. She gave me twin ram lambs. One moorit with no marks and one black with some splashes on his head.

All in all, lambing was quite the roller coaster for me and I have never been so happy to see a lambing season end like I was happy to see this one end. Ending tally, 5 rams and 3 ewes alive. Oh well, there is always next year!

Catching up for lost time

Okay. I'm trying to catch up for being a bad blogger. I know, whip me with a wet noodle.

Sage gave birth on May 11th to two ram lambs. That ended lambing for us with 18 lambs on the ground with 10 ewe lambs and 8 ram lambs.

We've been moving the ewes over to the Gingras' grassy areas. They've been grazing like locusts! Before moving the girls, Sylph's ewe lamb wasn't paying attention to where everybody went when they moved to another patch of grass. She started to panic when she didn't see mom, so she ran into the hog panels we have up for fencing. I took her to the vet to find out she had a clean break on the bone between the hoof and elbow area. She looked like this after the vet wrapped her up.

She's now doing better - the break has healed and she's not sporting some funny kneesocks anymore. But, she still favors the leg from time to time. She's also not going to be registered. She's scritchy feeling and that's surprising for a lamb, considering her mom is the oldest ewe we have and still soft feeling. Her dad is SheltrgPines Uber and real soft, too. What a disappointment.

Rain, rain go away.
Momma needs to cut some hay.
The sheep are sad,
the weather's bad.
We'll all be glad when the sun comes again!

Thus ends your poetry interlude.

One other exciting thing that happened, was that when googling the farm name, I came across a person who bought some of Celebrian's wool and she posted on her blog about it. Check it out on her blog called Able to Dream.