playing doctor

Tonight I played doctor. One of my coworkers asked me to help his neighbor with some new babies and I obliged. It just so happened that a pair of lambs were born in Sunderland Vermont (and they were quite the faux-miracle). I guess the four "wethers" the ewes were raised with—weren't. So this past weekend when my coworker Mike was watching his neighbor's farm (while the greenhorn farmers were on vacation), you can imagine his surprise when he realized the sheep population had doubled! The two Jacob ewes in the pasture were suddenly joined with two little splotched lambs. Not planning to breed until this fall, their shepherd was equally thrown off by the new arrivals. And so, with only one recent lambing season under my belt, I was asked to come give shots, band tails, check vital signs and help the new shepherd learn what I myself had just figured out.

...Kinda soon to become a mentor, but it seems to happen a lot out here. When my yearling's weak ram lamb needed to be tube fed out in the lambing jug this past March, I watched my friend Yasheva slowly feed him the plastic tube down his throat and wait for him to swallow it before she offered any colostrum. She needed to make sure it was going into his stomach and not his lungs, and explained calmly how she needed to feel him sucking before she squirted the sheep's first milk into him. I said, in awe, "Wow.... how many times have you had to do this with your goats?" Yasheva, ever the professional, replied, "I've never done this before, but I read about it. Seems to be working...." And that little ram lamb is hanging out with her goats right now, doing magnificently. Winging it is a rule of thumb.

So I took a note from her book, and acted like everything was under control and I had done this a million times (and not, you know, seven). I told him what to buy at Tractor Supply: from needles to CDT to antibiotics (just in case) and I told him I would bring my docker and ear tagger and help get these little ones ready for the big world.

When I pulled up to Rob's farm I parked the Dodge with Gibson, grabbed my wicker "Doctor's Basket" of needles, bands, dockers and meds and walked out to the barn to show him the ropes best I knew them. He was just as nervous as I was watching Yasheva do it the first time. I asked him to give the shot and he said "I better watch you do it, I didn't see before" which is exactly what I said when I was asked the first time! (I had five ewes to go through, so I did get my turn. She only accepted my excuse twice.) I checked the second ewe's (expecting any day now) udder and it was HUGE. New sheep were on the way. I acted as sure as possible, like I've been doing this for years.

I think he bought it.

The little Jacobs are doing well—and thanks to a poorly castrated ram—tonight, I became a lamb nurse.