Students watch over local lambs

Author: Elspeth Pierson

Don Mitchell, lecturer in English and Film and Media Culture, announced to our lecture hall on the first day of Nature's Meanings (EL 215) that we would each be required to spend an April night in his barn birthing lambs. We were all a bit surprised, perhaps, but in the cold of February, April was still a long way off and we were too preoccupied with trips to the Snow Bowl and Spring Break plans to worry about the off-beat assignment too much.

Last week, however, as lambing season approached in earnest and we were each asked to sign up for a night on watch, our interest (and our apprehension) grew. A note on the blackboard instructed us to "think bell curve" as we picked our night, meaning that we should base our decision on the fact that the most births were likely to occur during the middle of the month-long season.

Fearing the promise of a night filled with bleating lambs and possible complications, I chose one of the earliest dates and marked the fateful day warily in my assignment notebook. We covered the basics of delivery and emergency protocol during discussion on Friday, and Monday night at 9 p.m. sharp I met my trusty partner, Patrick Leibach '06, at Adirondack Circle to make the trip to Mitchell's farm.

We arrived around 9:30 p.m., in time to get the tour of the house and the barn from Mitchell's wife Cheryl. After being shown to our "office" - a windowed loft overlooking the barn floor - and given a few basic instructions, we were left on our own with the flock.

We quickly discovered that there had already been numerous births, and checked on each ewe and her lambs in the make-shift wooden pens that lined the barn walls. Recalling what we had learned in discussion, we noted that several of the newborn lambs needed to have their umbilical cords cut, and set about carrying out this first task. As Patrick held the first lamb and I readied the scissors, my anxiety mounted and I prepared myself for the resentful screams of an animal in pain. I snipped the shriveled black cord away and was amazed to see that the lamb did not even flinch, let alone cry out.

After this initial success, my fear was mitigated and the night proceeded with relative calm. Patrick and I managed to collect the recently birthed placenta (it often does not come out until several hours after the birth of the lambs) from the barn floor and place it in the well-loved "placenta bucket" that Cheryl had pointed out to us earlier. We then resigned ourselves to waiting and watching from the office, where a futon, an armchair and a space heater offered some relief from the chilly barn air.

After about an hour of attentive watchfulness, I began to have difficulty staying awake. Patrick offered to take over the watch for a while, so I allowed myself to doze off for an hour or so. Around 2 a.m. we went down to check on the barn again - all was well - and I took a turn on watch while Patrick napped.

At 3 a.m. we noticed an ewe in distress, pawing at the barn floor and circling uncomfortably, and my uneasiness quickly returned. We went down to corral the other ewes away from her, and stepped back to watch her from a careful distance. I was expecting to witness a long, painful labor, but before 20 minutes were up, the ewe was licking lovingly away at her newborn lamb. Her contractions appeared to be continuing, however, and we remembered Mitchell's warning that the ewes in his flock had been selected for high fertility, and that therefore the births usually occurred in twos or threes. Twenty easy minutes later, another lamb joined its sibling on the barn floor, and within an half hour both were on their feet and searching for milk. The mother-child bond was solidified quickly and soon they were all three licking each other and the two siblings were playing at falling into adorable little heaps in the hay.

The night continued without too much more ado - although the excitement of the births made sleep a bit more difficult - and when Mitchell came to retrieve us at dawn we were no worse for the wear. After morning chores and a hearty breakfast in the Mitchell kitchen, I was tired but smiling and ready to return to campus with a story of success and high spirits.