Well, what a way to start my 46th birthday. This cute little ramling was stuck and I pulled him out of his mom just 2 days ago. He was a very big, alert and jumpy little ramling. Things would change this morning.
As I started my morning routine this morning, I went out to the stall that is attached to our house to find this little black ramling not looking so good. I quickly picked up his cold and limp little body and ran into the house.
I wrapped him up, called my nephew's house (that is right across the street) and told his wife I was coming down with a cold lamb.
She sat by the fireplace with him, rubbing him, syringe feeding him and trying to get him to respond for an hour or more. He warmed up and appeared to be more alert but then, he quickly started losing the desire to live. He had gotten to cold for too long. I brought him back to my house and put him into my daughter's arms by our fireplace. He died just moments later. Tears were shed even though this little ramling had no name yet.
LESSONS LEARNED
Lesson one learned is that when I, the mama of this house am down and out with a raging fever, I have to make sure the kidos are doing all of the things that I do. These can be simple things, like just going out and looking at the animals for a few minutes.
Lesson two is that I am learning that sheep are very different than goats. We have raised goats for years but, this is the first year we have experienced lambs being born. It has been harder because we have a flock of sheep that came to us bred and we do not know their due dates. Plus, the Lord is having all of these lambs come during the Groundhog Blizzard of 2011.
Lesson three was a hard one for my 13 year old shepherdess to learn. She said she noticed that the ramling did not appear as active yesterday but, she is spoiled and used to me telling her what to look for and do. She was crying pretty hard as she sat in the rocker holding his dead little body. Some lessons come the hard way . . . this was one of them.
As a result, I did a tiny bit of research about hypothermia in lambs. When I get that post put together I will link to it from here, Lord willing.
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