Spring is the time of flowers, green grass, random snowstorms, and lambing. With lambing comes the inevitable: Bottle Babies. Babies and bottles are naturally connected after all. But these aren’t human babies, obviously. They are sheep/goats that for one reason or another need milk, and mom is not involved.
Most shepherds refer to these lambs as “Bums” or “Bummer”. Bums brings up pictures of lazy, no-good lambs refusing to do work. A Bum in sports is a player who simply isn’t very good, and has no urge to be better. The allusion to these nardewells seems out of place; after all the lambs didn’t do anything wrong. In most cases, the mom is hardly to blame. Some ewes reject lambs on their first freshening. They are scared, have no idea what is going on, and the idea of this little creature attaching to them is just too much (very similar to having human teenagers). In our most recent case, a young ewe was hit by one bug or the other. While we work to get her healthy, the needs of her lamb are too much for her. So Lena is now in our bottle lamb pen, being weighed daily.
I read that “Bummer” perhaps is more accurate. Some say the name comes from the lamb hanging out alone, head down, sad. Quite a “Bummer”. Of course most of us would be pretty depressed without food. Heck, I’m sad if there is no chocolate in the house. Two of our current Bummers are certainly melancholy creatures. When they see us, they cry. Oh how they cry. Loud calls for that mythical bottle. Threats of their imminent demise without it. Until they get that bottle, or a pile of hay, and all is right with the world.
The two complainers, Peter and Pan, are far from Bummers for us. They are bonus lambs. A nearby breeder had more lambs than available feeders, so we took two gorgeous Merino/Rambouillet rams (now wethers). As a fiber farm, wethers outside of our normal breeds are bonuses-no worries about breeding ewes, angry rams, but all the fiber benefits. Bonus lambs is a better term. After all, left to their own devices these lambs would die. Instead, we keep herd numbers strong and animals alive-a worthy bonus.
Bottle babies have some curious after effects. The most notable is their comfort with people. When we first moved back to Helena, my mother-in-law purchased Bums for each of my children. The idea was to raise the sheep until the next spring, and then sell them for butcher. A great way to learn responsibility and earn money. Spoiler alert: Chupa and Pablo are very much alive and well on our farm still. And they are friendly. And they are big. So everytime I enter a pen with these two, I am attacked. Ok-not attacked. I’ve been rammed by an honery ram (ouch!). Chupa and Pablo tend to be more amiably aggressive. They butt their heads under my hand, stand in my path, anything for me to stop and say hi.
The sad news for all bottle babies, all babies in fact, is that eventually the milk dries up. Last weekend we moved Peter and Pan into a new pen with a few of our rescues. And the bottles stopped. Well, for them. They cry forlornly as we pass them with bottles for the two younger lambs, Lena and Iris. As we move past, Peter and Pan lay down together, the only solace is their companionship. Definitely a Bummer.