[Jacob-list] Our first bottle baby

[Abigail Brown]

After 6 years of breeding our Jacob sheep, we had our first bottle baby this year. 
 
Pearl was the born to the first ewe to lamb for us this season, and on a cold, windy, March evening. (wind chill was in the teens.) When I went outside at 8:30 to see if Rebecca had started lambing yet, as she was showing signs at feeding time, David was up, following mom, trying to nurse. This was Rebecca's first time so she kept backing up, knowing he belonged to her but wouldn't let him nurse yet. Pearl was laying in the middle of the paddock, wet and cold. I put mom and son in a jug, protecting them from the wind. I wrapped Pearl in an old coat, she was not moving. After I held Rebecca so that David could nurse, I focused my attention to Pearl. When I started rubbing her w/ the coat trying to dry her she responded a little. I did this for about 15 min. Then I remembered that Jacob lambs are up in 10 min., I knew Pearl had a problem. 
 
I took her into the house where my husband held her and immediately began praying for her and also massaging her. I felt inside her mouth which was very cold. I knew she would only warm up under a heat lamp. This was 10pm. At 2am we heard the first whimper from her. She finally warmed up. She was only 1 lb.!
 
Since our jacobs had all taken care of their lambs up to this point we were totally unprepared for a lamb. At 2am in the morning we made a Wal-Mart run to get puppy milk and a kitten bottle. I milked the mom to get some colostrum, it wasn't a lot but it was some. Pearl did not nurse well w/ the kitten bottle. She cried a lot and my husband held her the next day while I had to go to work. When I got home I came w/ a larger puppy bottle and a better nipple. She was almost 24 hours old and had not eaten yet. So we prepared electrolyte water for her in the new puppy bottle. This she took whole heartedly. After two feedings of electrolyte water, we fed her a mixture of colostrum and puppy milk. She never had scours and has always eaten very well. When we knew she was going to survive, we purchased fresh goats milk to feed her. 
 
For several days her mom recognized her as her lamb and called for her, but Pearl has only known us (husband, family dog, and I) as her mom! She stayed in the house for the first 3 weeks of her life, going out to feed and do her business. In transitioning her outside, we have had to keep our border collie, Jasmine, w/ her to pacify her. She did not recognize the other sheep to socialize w/ them. Also, we could not put her w/ the other sheep as none of the mom's now recognized her and push her out of their way, sometimes too forcefully.
 
Now that she is 5 weeks old, we have purchased lamb milk replacer and a bottle w/ a lamb nipple from Premier (she was going through 2 gallons of goats milk in a week!)
 
Our hopes for Pearl as our 'baby' is that she will teach our other jacobs who are very 'offish', that we are their friends, just not a source of grain and hay! ;)
 
Abigail Brown 
Shiloh Farm
Petersburg, IN
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Gillian Fuqua <gillianfuqua at adelphia.net> wrote:

My bottle baby, Bandit, now takes a bottle on my lap fairly well. 
Poor guy still tries to go for mom who butts him away. I am working on 
the assumption that he will begin to come to the bottle in a few days 
and won't need lap. My 7 yr old daughter is enraptured and I would 
love to get her feeding him too. save me some trips. She has a hard 
time holding him. Do we need to wait until he comes to the bottle for 
her to feed him? I was thinking I would try having her hold him and 
have her wear my stinky barn pullover. What have other folks done?

Gillian


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