The Collie Farm Blog

I love the Premier Supply online catalog, they have so many sensible products for farmers. These little fleece lamb coats are inexpensive and a great design for warming weak lambs. They have neck and leg holes and are quick to put on.

This little Jacob girl has been wearing hers since she was born last week, she was so small and unthrifty, I thought she could use some help. And it snowed during the week too, so I feel it really helped her focus her energy on gaining weight rather than keeping warm. I’ll probably remove it today, now that she’s caught up physically and it’s warmer out.

The fleece keeps its insulating power even when wet, and they wash and dry normally in the laundry. I plan to buy more next time I order, because it’s nice to be able to rotate a lot of them through the laundry. I think these blue ones look like Superman colors!

The ram lamb born to the Jacob ewe on Saturday didn’t make it, sadly. As you may be able to see in the picture, both lambs were quite thin and unthrifty when they were born. I think the ewe might not have been carrying enough condition, and since I just got her, I haven’t had much time to increase her nutrition plane in preparation for lambing. The ewe lamb was the larger and more vigorous of the two.

My mom mentioned that our old Great Grandma Cogan, a North Dakota homesteader and lifelong farmer, always said that females are usually the survivors, and it’s more typical for the males to be the weak ones. (I think she meant in the animal kingdom, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Grandma was also making a parallel to humans! ). If that ’s true, I don’t mind, because females are much more valuable in general- you only need so many boys, and the rest have to be sold or eaten! (In the animal kingdom, that is!)

Anyway, as I mentioned in my previous post, I figured out a bit late that this guy was just pretending he knew how to nurse. By late that night, it was evident he had lost too much energy to feed himself, and would certainly die without immediate intervention. So, this, of course, is where you dive in and do what you can- defying Mother Nature because it’s potentially a $200 animal that could be salvaged. But saving half-gone infants is always tricky, there is certainly an art to it. And there are many ways you can go wrong and just arrive at what was originally inevitable death anyway.

Since there was no suckling desire left, tube feeding was the only option. I felt pretty comfortable that I did the tube feeding correctly, but at one point when he was rallying on Sunday, I tried to get him to nurse with a nipple, and that was probably a mistake. Supposedly, the risk of milk aspiration is much higher with bottle feeding than tube feeding. And it was sometime after that when I noticed rattle-ey sounding breathing – a sign of impending pnuemonia from fluid in the lungs. And, he was developing scours- I probably gave him too much formula. Not to mention that since he did not get enough colostrum, he essentially had zero antibodies, so fighting any sort of infection is too big a challenge.

So, his odds were very slim whether I did nothing or tried something; and sure enough, Monday morning he took a turn for the worse and died that afternoon. I’m sad-I hope I never get over being sad seeing an animal die. But, it’s all part of the deal, nobody as 100% survival rates in breeding livestock. And without my intervention attempt, he still would have died.

The things I think I did right: having bottle and tube feeding equipment on hand, having both colostrum and regular milk replacer on hand, and everything in a bucket ready to go. I have lots of extra dog crates, pens, towels etc so I can always bring an animal right into the house for warmth and safety. As soon as I decided supplementation was necessary, I was able to get right on it. And I felt fairly confident in the tube feeding procedure.

The mistakes I think I made- not really getting under there to verify that the lambs were actually nursing. And possibly not taking action more quickly-though this is a hard one, because you don’t want to take one away from the ewe unnecessarily, as then you may be decreasing their odds of success once you start monkeying with them. And I think I fed him too much. That is the hardest part in supplementing, as I think the goal is to shoot for barely enough, because underfeeding is safer than overfeeding. This is where judgment and experience probably play a big role, I’m sure I’ll get better at it over time.

The good news is, the ewe and ewe lamb seem to be doing ok. They are the most important ones, anyway.

One of the lambs born yesterday was a bummer- too weak to nurse. He fooled me for a while, because he was standing there with his head up in the udder, wagging his tail. But I finally figured out he wasn’t eating, while his sister was gaining weight and energy, he was remaining a skeleton. I tried to help him nurse late last night, and succeeded in getting a little colostrum in him and getting a decent sucking response. But by morning he was weak and cold, so he wasn’t able to stick with it.

So, in the house he came, to be tube fed. I tried my best to milk colostrum out of the ewe, and I got a little, but boy she has small teats and colustrum is thick! So, I resorted to powered colustrum, which isn’t nearly as good. This lamb has a very weak sucking impulse, so tube feeding is definitely a must. He seems to be gaining strength, so knock on wood, he might make it. I was able to get a little more milk out of the ewe today, to supplement the powdered stuff.

Tomorrow I’ll have to take him to work, in the car in a crate, so I can feed him every four hours, as is the requirement for the first three days. Not to mention getting up at 2am to do one middle-of-the-night feeding.

The Border Collies think this is the best-ever: livestock in the HOUSE! Maggie must be watched very carefully, as she would be quick to kill such a little thing. Gene, in a rare reversal of her normally obsessive herding instinct, is being very motherly. She has very strong maternal instincts, and is always trying to wash and lick everyone. She’s finally getting her wish- it’s actually a big help to have her wash the milky mouth of this baby, and his back end! There is nothing like a dog tongue for non-chafing washing of orphan babies, I’ve found!

Our Jacob ewe lambed today- in broad daylight, which was cool. We didn’t notice her in labor at all this morning during feeding, later I saw her hanging her head a bit. But she was pretty subtle, the next time I looked up, she had a lamb on the ground! The second one came easily about 20 min later, I helped just a bit because one leg was backwards.

The LGD was so well behaved, curious, but gentle. She licked the lambs a lot. I did separate the ewe into her own jug tonight though, to help make sure both lambs eat. They look great- a ewe lamb and a ram!

Our livestock guardian dog  (who still doesn’t have a name!) is doing pretty well. She’s definitely got the right stuff- big bark, loves the sheep, weatherproof coat, and  just lays around most of the day. But, right now, she is still incredibly SILLY- just like any four month old dog would be.

In general, she gets along well with the sheep, she likes them, and they don’t mind her. Their inter-species communication functions well on a basic level, they understand she means them no harm, and she seems to find them to be pleasant company. But where this breaks down is that she still wants to play like a young dog does, and she hopes they’ll want to as well! She has moments of high energy and exuberance, where she leaps about, grabs the sheeps’ body parts, and tries to get them to engage in a good old wrestle. Of course, another dog would gladly sign up for such a ruckus, but wrestling is just not in a sheep’s repertoire.

The adult sheep have been able to manage this so far, they just move away from her in irritation, or butt her to send her on her way. Though I’ve seen her tugging on their tails and ears, she hasn’t seemed to do damage to them. Her advances are purely good-hearted:  I don’t see any hint of prey drive going on, she honestly does just want to play with her “friends” and she’s disappointed when they flee. But, this has not been good for the lamb. He tends to just hunker down and try to wait out the rough play. At first, she just made a few small tooth marks in him. But eventually, she bit him up good in the hock, and now he is lame. So, I had to make a separate section of the pen for his mother and him.

I’ve tried a few other things, with limited success. First, I tied an empty milk jug to her collar, with the idea being when she leaps and pounces, it’ll bounce and hit her in the face, providing enough of an irritant to slow her down. This actually worked well for a few days, she was terrified of the thing, and sat stock still for about 24 hours. But, now she’s used to it, and though I do think it makes her walk more carefully, it doesn’t slow her down that much.

The second thing I tried was making a creep for the lamb to get into, that would keep the dog out. I made an open-ended tunnel out of a grid of wire, so that even if she did a bunker crawl in after him, he could exit the other end. I showed him this, and he seemed to “get it”- I often saw him sleeping in there, and the dog couldn’t do much to him. But, I  the ewes kept wrecking the tunnel. They are shedding now, and are itchy, and they found that cramming their huge, pregnant bodies in there made for a splendid all-over scratching tube. But then they’d get stuck in there, and brute-force their way out, wreaking havoc with my petite lamb hut.

So, for how, he’s segregated so his leg can heal, poor guy. I have ordered 320 feet of electronet and a battery + solar panel charger. That should arrive next week, allowing me to re-configure the sheep and dog areas a little. Everyone can have more room, and I can separate out the soon-to-lamb ewes from the dog. Just in time, as they’re due the first week in March!