Every summer there is at least one hard luck case among our livestock that takes far more time and effort than everyone else combined. Sometimes it’s a calf, but more often it’s a lamb.
These little ones fail to thrive for a variety of reasons, and despite the fact that I know from experience failure to thrive is usually a one-way street, I can never bring myself to give up until they are ready to let go. I’ve loved and lost a lot of these fragile creatures over the years, and it breaks my heart every time.
Tragic
Last year’s tragic figures were twins and the tiniest lambs I’ve ever seen. They looked like children’s playthings —an imitation of lambs — because it was impossible to believe real lambs could be that small.
Their mother was unprepared for motherhood and was inexplicably terrified of her babies. She would run away bleating whenever either would approach her.
Their rough start and delicate bodies didn’t bode well for longevity. I started them on bottles and was sad but not surprised when both got weaker instead of stronger during their first days of life. One of the twins died after only three days, while the other grew sicker and sicker.
I didn’t name the survivor because I was certain her story would end like her sibling’s. Still, I brought her inside and nursed her around the clock, shaking my head at my own foolishness. There was no way this lamb was going to make it.
A week passed, then another. The lamb didn’t get better, but she didn’t get worse, and one thing was clear: she wanted to LIVE. I decided she needed a name strong enough to match her mighty spirit, so I started calling her Freya, after the Norse goddess. Meanwhile, the kids started calling her Dandelion because the first round of dandelions had just gone to seed, and they said that her fluffy, white head looked like the flowers in the yard.
Survive and thrive
Dandelion Freya is now a year and a month old. Last summer, when she got healthier, we tried to acclimate her to the flock, and though she enjoyed the company of the other ewes, she preferred to go her own way — sneaking out of the sheep pen to join the horses, chickens or dogs.
Over the winter, she was fed many times a day and always the very best stuff. She knew our schedule better than we did and managed to find her way to the calf pen just before they got hay and oats, or she’d sneak behind us and start snacking from the bag of pellets when our backs were turned. Her favorite though, was to meander down to the hay corral and begin peeling the best bites from the best bales before anyone else even had a chance.
All attempts to keep her fenced failed, and so we were not surprised at shearing when underneath her thick fleece she turned out to be quite a bit chubbier than any of the other yearlings.
“Hard to believe that’s the same animal as last spring,” I said to my husband, marveling that our tiniest lamb was now one of the biggest.
Dandelion Freya wasn’t done surprising us, however. I was gone for most of last week at an arts conference, and the morning I returned my husband greeted me with an unreadable smirk on his face.
“Guess who had a new baby last night?” he said, and the idea that it could be Dandelion Freya, who is too young to be cycling, let alone conceiving, was so far from my mind that I guessed almost every other ewe in the flock first.
But no, it was Dandelion Freya. Her baby is a tiny replica of her deceased twin, the only difference being that he is healthy and strong, and she is a devoted and doting mother. All of which shores up my belief that miracles do indeed beget miracles, and that heartbreak, when it heals, just makes more room for love to flourish.
