“They didn’t vote for George Bush” by Eugene Wyatt

April 2005

Nature demands that life forms replicate themselves with an insistence rivaled only by hunger and thirst; but in fact, food and water are ancillary to reproduction and their purpose in the natural scheme is to facilitate it.  All the pasture, hay, grain and water I've provided the sheep this year is now being expressed as lambs—13 newborns in the last 7 days.

The ewe gestates for 150 days, give or take a day or two.  Lambing begins when the lamb moves down into the birthing position (seen by a concave hollow just under the ewe's backbone); lambing is imminent, minutes away. During this time the ewe is agitated, moving in circles, her water may break.  She will lay down and raise her upper torso, pointing her head to the sky, extending her legs to the side, contracting and straining, perhaps a head will emerge, then she may get up to circle again to look for her lamb; not finding it, she will lay down again, raise her torso and strain; if she gets the shoulders out this time, the lamb may come out completely when she gets up to circle.  She gurgles, a sound only heard at or near birth, and begins licking the wet lamb, usually at the head, which the lamb shakes and takes its first breath.  A lamb is born. 

Lambing is laid-back on this farm: I let the ewes do it and more often than not they do just fine without any assistance from me.  Several times a day now, I go to the barn to look for ewes who have lambed and if I find one,  I leave her alone to 'mother-up' to the lamb: lick it clean, get it to its feet, and after some trial and error, suckle it at her teat.  At this point, I mark them with a spray marker, to visually ID them, one to the other.  Then I dip the lamb's umbilical cord in a 7% iodine solution to prevent infection.  I move both ewe and lamb to a pen with the other new arrivals; this is done by picking up the lamb; holding it at ewe eye-level, making my own "maa" sounds, if the lamb doesn't cry out, to keep the ewe focused; trailing the ewe to the pen gate.  Several days later I will eartag the lamb,  matching the visual spray markings, noting the eartag number of the dam and record these tag numbers in my flock spreadsheet; then I dock the tails of the newborns.  This is how lambing usually goes; there are always exceptions, too numerous in kind to detail here, but not that frequent. 

I have tried to breed my flock away from human dependence by selecting the healthy sheep to breed and culling the less healthy.  At birth, I listen to Nature, listen to the ewe, and let Nature have Its way and in Its infinite wisdom, accepting death as part of life, It builds a healthy flock.  There are many lessons here for humankind, but ones that are unacceptable to the conservative religious right (those who understand life partially and impose their fearful ideology on the being of others) and to their political panderers who seduce them for their votes, spelling OIL with the letters G-O-D. Often, I'm asked if sheep aren't "stupid"; I shrug and say, "I don't know, they didn't vote for George Bush."

Eugene Wyatt