The DU Lounge
Related: Culture Forums, Support Forumsmalaise
(269,157 posts)Thanks
malaise
(269,157 posts)Thanks
karin_sj
(811 posts)Dogs are such wonderful creatures
Farmer-Rick
(10,202 posts)But I never saw a ewe reject a lamb when they only had one lamb. It usually happens if they have twins or triplets. They kind of forget about the extra lambs or thinks it's another ewe's lamb. They won't feed another ewe's lamb without some trickery from the shephard.
Orphaned lambs are not uncommon. It's a bad situation for most shephards. That means you have to feed the lamb by hand every few hours. If it doesn't get the colostrum, then you got to feed artificial colostrum and protect it from common diseases. Though there are farms that manually feed all lambs routinely.
I actually had a ewe that was close to lambing steal other ewe's newborn lambs. I had to take the lambs back to their real mothers after each lambing. Eventually she stopped stealing lambs after she had her own.
maddiemom
(5,106 posts)This appeared to be a single lamb. Thanks for clarifying what seemed to have been an unusual situation. Wonderful dog!