Four-Footed Midwife-ery

With everything going on around here, it’s still lambing time and a pregnancy doesn’t just stop progressing because the kids are sick or someone got a bad grade on a spelling test (or 3).

We have six ewes safely delivered of TEN lambs right now. Ten lambs, that’s a nice, round number. All healthy and frisky and doing just fine over in the nursery pen. (Well, 9 are in the nursery pen. 1 will be moving this evening.)

That leaves us TEN ewes still biding their time over there in the “gestation” field. (We don’t actually call it that, I just made that up this moment. We just call it the “top field” or “the field by the road” or “the top field by the road.”)

Here’s a few things I’ve learned over the last couple years of being a four-foot midwife:

• Sheep tend to lay down a lot when they’re in labor.
• Sheep tend to lay down a lot when they’re just hanging out.
• Sheep laying down is not necessarily a good indication of labor if you’re on a tight schedule. But if you have a few hours to just sit around and watch your sheep lay around the field, hey, why not? You never know what you might see.

• Some sheep make a lot of noise at feeding time.
• Some sheep don’t.
• Some sheep make a lot of noise when they’re in labor.
• Some sheep don’t.
• It’s never the same sheep.

• Rams don’t have lambs.
• No matter what you think you see, your ram is not in labor. I promise.