We had an arrival yesterday - 2 lambs (one male, one female). This is the mother's first birth. When I checked on them late last night, I was concerned about the female lamb. It was bitterly cold - we are going through a cold snap - and she was cold and shivering. I took the decision to take her home to warm her up and feed her. I knew the outcome would be that I would be breaking the bond between mother and baby (leaving me to be the surrogate mother to the lamb) but this was preferable to getting to the farm in the morning to find she had died.
I took her back to the farm this morning. She hung about with her brother but she didn't suckle from the mother. She is now bottle fed by me. While this cold snap continues, she will be kept in our house overnight. A lamb's biggest source of heat is the mother and if she no longer accepts the baby, she will provide no heat for it. Once the cold snap is over, we can look again at leaving her in the field with the other sheep overnight.
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