Monday 6 August 2012

Sad story - A lamb rejected by mum, Part 5

A couple of hours later, we came back to the spot where we left the ewe and her lamb. The little lamb was lying on the grass, very quietly, but the mum was nowhere to be seen.

We were in for a surprise...

We found her after a few minutes as she was out of sight on lower grounds. Only a few meters away from where we left them both, she was lying on her back, stuck between two large rocks, with her four legs up in the air. Not sure how it happened, but somehow, she managed to fall off the grass verge down about one meter onto these large rocks. Surely, she would not deliberately jump down there!!!

Below are a couple of pictures showing the type of terrain she fell down onto.




She was still alive though. Her legs would make occasional jerky mouvements. Two of the guys moved her slightly to the side so that she would lie in a more confortable position.

We thought of bringing the lamb to her so it could feed. If the ewe were to die, at leat the lamb would have a fighting chance of survival while waiting for the farmer to come back from work!
This was a very unsuccessful attempt. The lamb could not take to her teat and we could not extract any milk by hand either.

So, we decided to move the ewe back on higher grounds so that the farmer could see her from the road. We had to call for reinforcement as the ewe was very heavy. We went to get the other two brothers and the four of them managed to lift the ewe back to a flat part of the grass and the lamb was brought to her.
To be continued...

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