Chapter 32
LAMBING
Athousand ewes could drop two thousand lambs. At the moment, the ewes were heavily pregnant. Kazi had separated out the ewes that looked like they were about to lamb and brought them into the sheep barn.
Monday morning, Nev carried two cups of coffee out to the sheep barn. Ron had a large bandage on her neck again. She must have had another laser session to remove the fading KITTEN tattoo.
“How much did that cost?” Nev asked.
Ron peeled back the bandage to show off the blistered pink skin underneath. It looked like it hurt. Nev winced.
“You don’t want to know,” Ron said.
Noted. Nev didn’t have any tattoos, which might be a sign that she feared commitment. “Did you do something nice for your dad yesterday?” Yesterday was Father’s Day, September 6th.
“Took him fishing.”
“Good onya. Catch anything?”
“Barra.” Barramundi.
“How big?” Nev asked.
Ron held her hands shoulder-width apart. Coffee sloshed onto the barn floor.
“Niiiice. Sleep in the barn last night?” Nev asked. Ron moved into the loft with Kazi during lambing season.
Ron nodded, sipping from the mug, gazing out distractedly at the pregnant ewes that milled about restlessly. One bleated. They’d drop lambs any hour now.
“How’s Kaz?” Nev asked.
“In his element. What time are you leaving?”
“Noon tomorrow. You sure you don’t want to come?
She saved you a seat at the thingy.” Nev didn’t say graduation, because she didn’t want to see the look in Ron’s eyes after.
It was true, though, that Taylor had sent Nev two tickets.
That girl didn’t miss a beat. Their mother had been thoughtful like that as well. Pity Taylor didn’t remember her.
Ron shook her head. “I have Rainbow Friday.”
“Fly home Thursday.”
Ron looked skeptical. “I shouldn’t. Nervous about the hearing.”
“Don’t be.”
“Can’t help it.”
Nev tugged a lock of Ron’s hair to make her smile. Worked every time.
“I’ll get her a card and a present,” Ron said. “What do you think she wants? What is she into?”
Nev puffed out her cheeks. “Hell if I know. You’re closer to her age, you tell me.”
“I don’t know what college girls like. Journals? Gift cards? What are you getting her?”
“Haven’t thought about it.”
“I’ll buy something from both of us.”
“Thanks. I have wrapping paper, you know where it is, behind the door in the office. I can wrap it,” Nev said, on second thought.
Ron left after breakfast to cut hay, but Nev stayed to help Kazi with the ewes.
Once in a while a young first-time mother who didn’t understand what was happening rejected her newborn lambs, kicking them off the teat.
When that happened, Kazi intervened to swoop the unhappy trio into a small blue lambing pen with one corner fenced off so that the lambs could get away from their mother if she head-butted them.
If the mother continued to reject the tiny newborn lambs he let the ewe out into the field, put her ear-tag number on the cull list to be slaughtered with the lambs next May.
Farms couldn’t afford to keep bad mothers.
Nev watched the old man rub a towel on a ewe who had lost her lambs. That happened sometimes; lambs were born dead. This particular ewe, number three-eighty-seven, would need to be milked by hand or adopt lambs soon or else she would get mastitis.
“Need a hand?” Nev asked.
Kazi shook his head. “Nope.” He carried the dirty towel over to the lambs who had been rejected by their mother.
He crouched. One of the lambs was black, the other white.
He rubbed them both with the towel that smelled of the ewe.
If he was lucky, the ewe would smell these lambs and think they were her own.
Worth a try. The old man carried the lambs, one under each arm, little hooves dangling front and back.
There was nothing quite as precious as newborn lambs, probably because they were so floppy and fluffy, squishy and eager to press soft white noses into the hands of anyone who approached them. Lambs were gentler than puppies. They would have been ideal pets if they didn’t grow into sheep.
Nev held the side panel of the ewe’s pen open, then slid it shut behind him.
The ewe watched as Kazi set the lambs down beside her on the hay.
“Go on, then.” Kazi climbed out of the pen.
They watched, side by side at the rail, as the ewe sniffed the tiny white and black lambs.
Nev held her breath. It didn’t matter how many times she had seen him do it, the anticipation still got her.
The ewe, number three-eighty-seven, rubbed her nose against the black lamb’s side, gently pushing it towards her.
A hopeful sign. She licked the lambs. Then, forcefully, she head-butted them towards her udder. Success. She had accepted them.
The lambs were rooting around under her belly in the wrong place, not finding her teats.
Kazi went back into the blue pen to guide the bumbling little muppets’ noses under the ewe’s udder to smell the warm milk.
Lambs weren’t born knowing how to nurse, but they sure sorted it out quick.
He held their noses to the hairless pink udder.
They squirmed against his hold for a minute, then relaxed, opened their mouths and latched onto the ewe’s fat, finger-like teats.
Nev loved watching the moment lambs tasted milk for the first time.
The lambs crouched down and wagged their fluffy white tails in the air in obvious pleasure, the way dogs do.
Without letting go of the teats they head-butted the ewe’s udder, which encouraged milk to come down and squirt into their tiny pink toothless mouths.
It was all so very instinctual. Primal. I can make sweet milk come out of this squishy blob!
To every newborn lamb it was an epiphany.