From the Archives: May, 2012– The Lambing Gongshow

The morning was like any other.  I put on my dirty work pants, grabbed my leatherman, wrapped a scarf that looks like one of those Afghan sniper headdresses around my neck, threw on my old tin coat and finally slipped into some absolutely filthy boots.  I called the most recent addition to the clan, Phil, a border collie/Australian shepherd pup and our third dog, and walked outside into the razor-cold Idaho winter morning, pushing on one nostril as I blew through the other, coffee in hand.   I am in the midst of my retarded metamorphosis from corporate office drone to Idaho sheep rancher and it feels great.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Ewe 127 is the loudest of them.  She bleats almost constantly.  The other ewes are pregnant but 127 didn’t take.  She serves no purpose.  She just eats, defecates and bleats.  Like the other of the “troll sheep,” (a hobbit-inspired part of our flock that came from a neighboring ranch) she’s a yearling, so it’s not unusual that her two months at what we call Idaho Spring Break didn’t result in a pregnancy.  But knowing her, the ram at the ranch where the magic happens was probably avoiding her at all costs.  There’s only so much a guy is willing to put up with, and I assume sheep are the same.   Regardless of her age, our other two yearlings are now bred and look like giant, grossly swollen rabbit’s feet.  One of the older ewes had already lambed a week before with no problem–I walked outside one morning  and there were two lambs running around.

It was early April and quite cold, though the days were generally getting warmer.  To give you some perspective, when the quirky weather personality on news points to the coldest place in the country, a lot of the time it’s a town called Stanley just north of us.  Winter in Idaho is not for the uninitiated nor super skinny city person accustomed to wearing Old Navy shorts and ankle socks all year long.  That sort of blatant disregard for dignity and/or the seasons will get you killed here.  Fleece-lined boots, flannel lined pants and down coats sold outside of the mall are the order of the day if you’re w0rking outside here in the Gem State.

I walked out to the stables, gliding easily over a driveway suitable for NHL games.  At first glance, all seemed well–the ewes were up, milling about and noisily anticipating their morning feeding of certified organic hay from an operation just down the road.  The friendly ones, 108 and 79, trotted to the fence to greet me while the rest of the ewes slowly stood up in their “don’t rush me, I’m a pregnant ruminant on tiny legs” way.  Then I saw her.  Ewe #90, one of the yearling trolls, was standing by herself in the corner of the pin, seemingly uninterested in breakfast.  If you know sheep, particularly pregnant sheep in their last trimester, you know this is not normal.  It’s okay if you don’t–either did I.  Upon closer inspection, I noted that her tail was up and twisting around her lady parts.  Then I noted that there appeared to be a foreign object barely protruding from said lady parts.

Let’s be clear, here:  I’m not a kid person and have never felt the desire to have children.  Quite frankly, kids and yours truly don’t really jive.  And from what I’ve seen on TV, the phenomenon of birth looks more like a catastrophic accident than a miracle.  So when I saw what was her way of throwing the lone broad sword at the waiting Scottish army to initiate what was sure to be a fight that everybody lost, I gulped hard at my coffee and simply muttered “oh shit” to the two ewes in front of me.

“Get down here, dude.  It’s game on…90 is lambing.”  Jake responded by saying he was at the grocery store but that he would get down to the ranch as soon as he could.  He then asked if we had everything we needed.  “Grab some KY lubricant and make sure it’s unscented.  I guess the perfume can be quite painful,” I told him.  “Hopefully she doesn’t need help but we should get it just in case.” I then called my buddy at work and told him I was going to be late for a meeting because I was about to get elbow deep in sheep.  He called me a midwife.  My office coworkers, while occasionally entertained by my ranch misadventures, aren’t exactly clear on why I’m doing this.  Neither am I.

Jake was not only at the grocery store, he had been working there for a few weeks on a pretty routine and boring job for an accomplished builder who has done everything from building cabins for the Forest Service in remote Alaskan wilderness to building and servicing several cell phone towers in locations all over the world.  He and our buddy were working together on that project and they had initiated a game where you’d get a point for every hug you could get while working inside the grocery store.  Even though we live in a pretty small town, not every acquaintance you run into results in a hug, so the competition quickly evolved into a silent montage of awkward hugs.  See a close friend?  Hug them.  See a friend of a friend?  Give them a hug.  See a woman you may or may not have met at a birthday party for your friend’s wife two months ago?  Jump off your step ladder, run across the store like you’re going to tackle a shoplifter and wrap your arms around them.  Score another point and hope you don’t see them anytime soon.

I’m sure the young woman working checkout at the register that morning recognized Jake from seeing him around during the preceding few weeks and it’s entirely plausible that he had been dubbed a creepy, serial hugger at some point in the employe snack room.  Regardless, Jake handed the woman a large squeeze bottle of KY Unscented Sensitive Jelly with a friendly “good morning.”  The woman took the bottle and scanned it quickly.  BEEP!  Pausing to look at the computer, she scanned it again.  BEEP!  And again.  BEEP!  “I’m sorry,” the woman said, “our computers are having issues this morning.”  Before Jake could say anything, the woman began shouting to another employee.  “Do you know what’s up with…um…KY Unscented Sensitive Jelly in a 16oz bottle?”  “What?  KY what?” replied the short, balding Asian manager at the customer service desk.  “KY Unscented Sensitive Jelly.  Big one.  I can’t get a price on it because of the issues.”  At this point, Jake is looking around in horror.  The issues had apparently crippled every register, so the resulting traffic jam became a sizable audience to Jake’s 7am quest for KY Unscented Sensitive Jelly.  The people behind him were more than annoyed, yet clearly intrigued.  “Sir, I’m sorry.  Is there anyway you can come back later for this?”  The woman was clearly inferring that she knew Jake worked inside the store, compounding the awkward exchange.  And without thinking, Jake grabbed the bottle, left her the box, and stated “No.  I need it now for a sheep.  I’ll come back later and pay for it.”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I had managed to get the ewe in question into one of the lambing jugs we had built inside the stable.  Oddly enough, she was a little slower than normal when she had something breaching her lady parts, so I was able corner her with Phil’s help and then and walk her into the jug.  We had prepared the lambing jugs by closing them off with hog panels, running a special heat lamp into them for the newborn lambs and laying down clean straw to insulate the floor.  Now that it was just me and ewe #90 all dressed up with nowhere to go, I awkwardly turned her around so that I was facing her rear end, apologizing as I did so.  What I saw shouldn’t have surprised me after hours of reading and some serious Youtube research, but my brain still sputtered on the processing side.  There right in front of me, was a sheep, her vagina and just a quarter inch or so of a pair of hooves sticking out of her, along with a nose.  I quickly snapped a picture with my phone and sent it to my buddy in Austin, which in retrospect, probably could have benefited from some explanation.  The ewe was breathing quite hard and obviously uncomfortable, so I reflexively scratched her gently behind her ears and I began to sing.  I sang that ewe arguably one of the most powerful renditions of Waylon Jennings’ “Are You Sure Hank Done it this Way” ever performed outside of Nashville. I’m not sure if she appreciated it but it got my own breathing under control and seemed to really calm me down.

Jake pulled in shortly after and we agreed that at this point the ewe definitely required assistance.  Jake was pretty excited to do the assisting and I was happy to hold the ewe was best I could.  A few phone calls to our friendly supply store, Rancher’s Supply in Picabo, Idaho, and we had all the game plan we were ever going to get:  Put on our special gloves, lube up with Jake’s coveted KY Unscented Sensitive Jelly, and gently pull on the lamb every time the ewe contracted.  Fortunately, I had seen Knocked Up a few times and new what contractions were, so we were set.  Jake put the elbow-long gloves on and smothered them with a liberal amount of the lubrication.  I held the ewe from the front and we began the fight.  The ewe would bleat, Jake would very gently tug and the lamb would come out an inch at a time.  “Dude!  We’ve got a nose here.” “I can see the eyes.”  “Here comes the rest of the head.”  Jake continued to give me updates and before we knew it, a slimy, skinny, newborn lamb hit the straw.  Jake rubbed the lamb’s neck and tickled it’s nose with a piece of straw in order to help it start breathing and to clear it’s airways.  Sure enough, the lamb was breathing, bleating and kicking around in the straw. The ewe was clearly spent.  We got her some fresh water and hand-fed her some grain and alfalfa pellets which she slowly ate.  The newborn lamb was also hungry and Jake and I were encouraged when it stood up clumsily and tried to feed from mom.  I “primed the pump,” meaning I tugged on the ewe’s teat until colostrum squirted out, then placed the lamb on the teat. “Touchdown, Bama!” Jake stated.

There were high fives as we cleaned up, recounting of moments and maybe even some knuckle love, but I doubt it.  The new mom and her lamb would spend the next three days in the jug until they had properly bonded and there was no risk of the ewe rejecting her newborn.  I had been extremely stressed by the prospect of an assisted lambing.  We had worked very hard to build this fledgling flock and the prospect of being involved in a lambing had “catastrophic disaster” written all over it.  But just like all the other aspects of learning ranching, we had gotten through it one unscented, sensitive, lubricated step at a time.