Tides A Turnin’

It was a tough week last week.

The hard week started last Sunday.  And the story in a second, but first a note…

Sorry I left you with such a dismal post for so long, I will try to refrain from exposing my psychosis, well at least I won’t keep it up front for nearly two weeks anyway. 

First off Dear Reader, you will never be dropped from my Reader because it is for you I have a now tidy Reader minus all the unnecessary news feeds and blogs that aren’t by real people that were mistakenly added.

The stuff that has been buggin’ me of late, that I can’t seem to get my sorry self over?   Pessimistic panickers.  I’ve spoken, written, on this before, usually a bit of pessimism thrown at me serves to throw me into overdrive towards accomplishment.

However lately I must be hormonal, like for two years straight, because instead of ultimately laughing it off and saying, “you really think so?” I have been wanting to be very very surly in my retorts. I should just sit and eat a torte instead. 

The other thing that I seem to not get over in a very nice manner at all, panicky people.  I don’t mean the “some one just dropped a bomb on the city and every one is running” panic, but just good ol’ every day hand wringing.  “The world is going to end because the neighbor painted their house,” type panic.  Good ol’ fashioned worrying, about things that are none of our business, about things that are not in our control, about things that might not happen any way, worrying about things that are just… well, things.  I have always had a hard time listening to hand-wringing without poor effect, but lately I’ve become intolerable to hearing hand wringing, if by intolerable I can mean nearly brutally nasty about it.

But amid the hard quiet work that we’ve been doing this week God has been workin’ on me. Ouch.  Mostly a paraphrase of a piece of scripture I know is there: I, Lanny P., don’t know crap.  Nothin’.  So a closed mouth and a kind face to all is what I should be concerning myself with.

So in earnest I will be working on my mood, and taking my vitamin D regularly instead of waiting until I want to pick up the radio and dash it across the room.  My anger, frustration, irritation is no less a disappointment to my Creator than another’s worry.  My red face or their red hands, pretty much the same thing.

So now to the fun stuff.  Work.  And yes, I do believe to the very tips of my toes, Dear Reader, that work is fun.  Even hard, muddy, no fruition, asthma producing work. 

So we had lambing hell week right after Timmy arrived.  He is doing fine by the way, big and strong.  Last Saturday (18th) we had an ewe prolapse, Dirt shoved her stuff back in, he and Bet talked about the feeding routine, cutting back on the evening hay (hay takes up a lot of room inside) and it seemed like things were okay, just watching and waiting for more lambs to join Timmy.

The next morning, the ewe that prolapsed had a bag hanging (part of the amniotic sac will often present itself in the early stages of a ewe’s labor) but she was just eating and pretending as if all was normal.  Sometimes hay and grain will entice an ewe to forget for a minute or two what is going on at the other end, that is why we placed this one on the other side of the fence where there was only grass, usually the grass isn’t enough to keep them from laboring, not so with this one, so we were going to give her a few minutes.

Farther out in the pasture another ewe was laboring right where Timmy was born.

First lamb out with a little help from Dirt, super big, but no problems, we all (Anna included, her and Justin were down for the weekend) stood around waiting and watching, and occasionally looking over to where the other ewe that should have been in labor was, just wandering around eating.  The ewe kept tidying and nudging the lamb, that’s her job, and then suddenly backed up, had a contraction, and out came…something, to which I exclaimed, “What the heck was that?!”

Sure ‘nuff, it was a barely formed lamb.  Ugh, I hate it when that happens.

And still nothing from the other ewe.  After we did a bunch of other things around the farm and set Justin and Anna on their way home, we continued to watch the ewe that was determined to ignore the elephant in the room, or the lamb that would like to come out.

Finally enough was enough, and Dirt went in aggressively after the ewe proceeded to prolapse again. What he felt was a misaligned lamb, and huge.  But eventually Dirt was able to get it out, stillborn.  The ewe was up again, eating, and pretending as if everything was normal.  Dirt let some time pass as she didn’t seem to be doing anything more than normal when a ewe has a single birth.

But no placenta came.  More time, nothing but somewhat odd behavior, so in Dirt went again, up to his arm pit, way back inside her, a sideways lamb.  Dirt worked for hours to turn it.  And hold on to your queasy stomachs, it did not smell right, it had that sweet puke smell.  Once it was out the reason for the smell was evident, the second lamb had been dead for a few days evident by the lack of hair and hooves.  No one survived that birth. 

Now we had a dead ewe and only two lambs from three births, not good percentages.  Sheep folks like to have a 200% lamb crop, that means two live lambs from each breedable ewe.  It is a hard target to hit when you have yearlings in the herd, they usually throw singles.  But sometimes a set of triplets or two will balance that out and it turns out to be a stellar year.  A 150% lamb crop on the ground (born) or there abouts is nice, doable on the pocket book if everything else goes well (feed prices, haying success, good growing season).  A 100% lamb crop, not so great but a heck of a lot better than a 67% lamb crop. Which was where we were at the beginning of last week. Three lambs from four births.  Not good and from disturbing, disheartening events.

But now our numbers are up.  Things turned around with a couple of easy births and a couple sets of twins.  So for now we sit at 112.5%, hopefully we don’t slip down from here and prayin’ we go up a little. 

And it will be nice to be at the end.  If my count is right, six more ewes to go, there is a ewe out there that has yet to lamb for us, our ram evidently doesn’t like tails, so she lambs or goes to the auction this year, but we did keep her two years past logical and one year past hopeful, so she is included in the count nonetheless.

Ultimately the count isn’t final until the fall.  So after the tolls of conception, gestation and birth, there is still coyotes, eagles, neighbor dogs and disease to get past.  Ahh the challenge of small farming, wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

Like Bet said even after a grueling week and in between hard to pull live twins, “I just love little lamby faces.”