A Day In The Life Of A Shepherdess

I've been trying to think of the best way to describe my experiences of the past couple months, but I'm not really sure how to go about it. So, I think I'll just start with today. Here's what happened

I woke up at 6am, it's dark. I make a big pot of coffee for everyone. I mix up the milk replacer and feed the 19 baby lambs. I gave them new straw for bedding and they went nuts, bouncing with their uncoordinated limbs, hitting each other, the walls, the panels, the water bucket. Oh the joy of straw in the morning. Got a panicked call that there was chaos in the barn, so we put on our jackets and boots and headed down the hill making jokes about what the chaos could be. The chaos: one sheep had twins, another sheep had been in labor all night and hadn't had any of her babies yet but decided that one of the twins must be hers. Meanwhile, the 40 other sheep are running around like bimbos because they want food. We give them food, get the twins with their mama in a pen. Meanwhile we stick a hand into the one who had had contractions all night and pull out a little white ewe, stick hand back in and pull out a little black ewe. We put them all in a pen. I spend the next half hour getting the babies dry (via towel and hair dryer), clipping umbilical cords, weighing them, getting them to nurse, making sure their mama doesn't step on them. Meanwhile, I see another baby beginning out of the baby-stealing mama, so we pull a big strapping ram out. She's still in labor, so we pull another big strapping ram out of her. Dry, clip, weigh, record, feed, water. Time for breakfast.

Also today: one of the new strapping rams got stepped on and we had to take care of him. One of the quads was far too itsy bitsy and cold so we had to take care of her. Little oven from the other day wasn't looking too hot--nursed her back to health. A stillborn lamb came out of mama with the twins after passing her placenta. The chicken coop flooded. Taught some lambs to bottle feed. Put stomach tubes into a lot of lambs. I cried twice, laughed a lot, took a lot of deep breaths. I really didn't like finding and picking up the rigid stillborn lamb. I started swinging it from its back legs to see if it might be alive, then I held it for a second waiting for it to kick or move like all the other lambs, but nothing happened. And I realized that I really didn't want to hold it anymore.

I really really like sheep. They are fantastic animals. Taking care of them feels tiring right now. But let me tell you about that sheep milk yogurt and cheese...yum.