Check out the link to a new photo gallery. You'll find pictures from my childhood on the farm, as well as some recent farm scenes. This album will grow with the passing of seasons...
Chanyata

I can’t believe it’s been over a month since recording in this journal. Much has happened in the intervening weeks, including a trip to Venezuela to visit friends, another trip to see Kate and David, and the winter blahs! Enough of excuses.

February was always lambing time on the farm. Twins were more common than single lambs. We’d typically have a half dozen ewes who would be expecting, depending on the virility of the ram. For several years we owned a ram and at other times we borrowed one. Sometimes it wasn’t easy to tell when a ewe was due to deliver, especially when a thick coat of wool made it difficult to see the ewe’s backside. We’d err on the side of caution and keep the ewe penned up rather than take a chance on newborn lambs freezing to death outside.

Once lambs are born it’s important that they find the mother’s teats and begin nursing as soon as possible. Intervention was sometimes called for but it was better to let the process happen naturally. It was also necessary to dip the lambs’ umbilical cords in iodine to lessen the risk of infection.

Since most births were twins, we had to be sure that the ewe would accept both lambs. As strange as it seems, it wasn’t unheard of for a ewe to want nothing to do with a newborn, pushing or butting the lamb away as it would try to nurse. There were times when my all my dad’s efforts failed at coaxing the ewe to accept her lamb. Two options remained: see if another ewe would accept the lamb, or bottle feed the lamb. The latter option was the most difficult and dangerous for the lamb. Lambs nurse a lot and always seem to be hungry. Bottle fed lambs don’t gain weight as well as nursing lambs. We weren’t always successful in saving a rejected lamb. I have a photograph of one of our rejected lambs as it was being fed in the the farmhouse kitchen standing in a round tub we used to keep it enclosed and warm. One of these days I’ll figure out how to post photos...

Tails of the lambs had to come off to prevent infection, mostly from flies, leading to maggots. What an ugly mess that was. And it could also result in the lamb’s death. Sometimes we cut the tails with a knife or used a device that stretched open a small, heavy duty rubber band. The band would be placed over the tail and eventually it would dry up and fall off due to elimination of the blood supply to the tail. I know it doesn’t sound pleasant, and I’m sure it wasn’t for the lambs, but this was life on the farm. Any male lambs would have to be castrated at some point if they weren’t going to be kept or sold as rams. A special clamp was used to crush the cords carrying sperm from the testicles. It was a bloodless, though painful operation. It was never something I enjoyed doing.