MEMOIRS PART 11 - LAMBING TIME

Domestic sheep are not very bright. They have had most of their survival instincts bred out of them, the most notable being mothering instincts. Many of the ewes, especially the younger ones, didn't seem to associate the birthing process with any responsibilities on their part, so it was necessary to confine the ewe and the lamb in a small space, a pen about 4 feet square, until the ewe accepted the lamb as her own and the lamb was able to begin nursing.

There were some cases where the ewe died, leaving an orphan, or the lamb died, leaving a ewe with no lamb to nurse. Dad's practice was to take a lamb for a ewe that had given birth to twins and force the dead lamb's mother to accept the twin as her own. He did this by skinning the dead lamb, putting the skin on the new lamb as a coat, and then confining the lamb and ewe in a pen. He then held the ewe so that she couldn't reject the new lamb until it had suckled to its fill. This had to happen about every two hours, day and night , for two or three days. When the ewe finally accepted the new lamb, Dad took off the skin and turned the ewe and lamb outside with the rest of the flock.

When all else failed, we had many of what we called "pet lambs", which we fed with cows' milk from ketchup bottles with a nipple attached.

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Somewhere around lambing time came shearing time. The shearers came on some appropriate and prearranged day and began the shearing process. They didn't have electric tools then; instead they used what we called "sheep shears", which were a large device like scissors, with blades about 2 inches wide. After the sheep was sheared, the wool was bundled into a loose ball and taken to the sacking stand. The ball was put in a wool sack, which was a huge burlap bag 10 feet long and three feet in diameter when full. The sack was attached to and held open by a steel ring at the top of the sacking stand, a structure 12 feet high, so that the sack hung straight down.

The fleece was tossed up to a person at the top of the stand, who then dropped it into the sack, where a small boy (me) was tromping the fleece down to pack it more tightly. As each sack was filled, it was sewn shut at the top, and another sack was installed on the stand. I can still remember the lanolin smell inside the sacks; at the end of each day I had to remove my clothes and be inspected minutely for ticks.