29 July 2009

Lost Lamb

We lost a lamb to what was almost certainly pneumonia overnight. He'd developed a terrible wheezing hack in his lungs last night, and was struggling to catch his breath. He hadn't seemed that bad earlier in the day, and I'd wanted to give him a chance to beat it on his own; the sudden nose-dive at 10pm caught me by surprise. I told Mrs Yeoman Farmer that I'd take him to the vet if he survived the night...but that has turned out not to be necessary.

Losing an animal as valuable as an Icelandic lamb is always a big disappointment, but the incident has led me to reflect on a couple of thoughts:

First, animal deaths have gotten much easier to take --- and now cause much less emotional distress --- than when we we first began farming. The very first animal we lost was a baby chick from our initial batch of broilers. MYF brought it inside when it was having trouble standing up, and we did everything we could to keep it going, but it just wasn't meant to survive. I remember feeling a sense of personal inadequacy, like I'd failed in some fundamental way. That sense of personal failure would grow more intense when we lost more valuable animals --- like the time I fed what turned out to be poison hemlock to our baby goslings, and four of them keeled over dead in the brooder within minutes of each other. The worst of all was when we lost fully-grown sheep to worms or white muscle disease; these were mature breeding stock, and to see them go down was a big blow.

As time has passed, it's not so much that I've become calloused or hardened to the deaths of animals...but rather that I've grown to realize that unexpected deaths are simply a natural part of life on a farm. We certainly work to take good care of the animals, and don't neglect them, but sometimes deaths still occur despite our best efforts. It isn't a personal statement about us, and I've grown to learn not to take it personally. Instead, this morning, I turned to the 13 healthy lambs and gave thanks that we still have so many --- and that this is the first lamb we've lost in well over a year.

Which brings me to the second point: We have lost far fewer lambs in Michigan than we did in Illinois. And we haven't lost a single mature sheep here, whereas we lost a few of them in Illinois. MYF and I were discussing this, and we think there are three main reasons:
  1. Hard Water. In Illinois, we didn't have water pipes leading out to the pasture. Unless we ran three long sections of hose from the house to a stock tank (a huge hassle to do every day), we had to rely on rain water for the sheep. We collected plenty of rainwater off the barn, stored it in an enormous water tank, and released it into the sheep stock tank as needed. We realize now that this ultra-soft water may have been fine for watering a vineyard or supplying poultry water, but the larger mammals would've benefited from the iron and other trace minerals in well water. Here in MI, our water is very high in iron, and we have pipes in the barn. Pretty much all the water our sheep and goats drink comes from that well. Not surprisingly, we haven't had a single case of anemia here --- whereas in Illinois we lost many lambs that way.
  2. Mineral. Here in Michigan, the sheep come into a nice secured barn every night; in Illinois, they'd had more simple pasture shelters. It had been very difficult to ensure a steady supply of supplemental mineral. Here, they have a mineral feeder in the barn that never gets rained on and never gets knocked over, and I keep an eye on it every morning --- and am constantly filling it. I am buying much more mineral here than in IL, which is a good thing --- it tells me that we weren't using nearly enough of it before. I'm convinced it's contributed greatly to our flock's overall health.
  3. Pasture. We have a much larger grazing area here for the sheep, and the grass is much longer. In Illinois, they'd eaten it down so low, they were constantly grazing in their own droppings as they looked for fresh grass. Here, they have lots of long grass and leafy brush to feast on, so they're never ingesting parasites that may have passed through their droppings. This leads to the parasite chain being broken or at least greatly weakened.

Farming and animal husbandry are a constant learning process, and require frequent adjustments. Often, it's trial and error (and experiences of failure) that are the best teachers. The lamb we lost overnight will almost certainly not be our last, but I'm trying to keep the focus on how far we've come and how much healthier our flock is now...and what practices will help keep us on that upward trajectory.

7 comments:

Yeoman said...

Sheep are tough. I think to raise sheep, you have to accustom yourself to constant loss. At least each loss is not as great of financial loss as with cattle.

That may sound harsh, but sheep, as the old phrase goes, are born looking for a way to die.

TYF said...

Yeoman, we've certainly found "born looking for a way to die" to be true of turkeys...even the heritage breed birds suffer plenty of losses the first several weeks. Frustrating, but seems to be the price of admission.

With sheep, I think it depends a lot on the breed. Icelandics (which we raise) are a generally hardier bunch; we haven't experienced the losses that some do with commercial meat breeds. The flip side, of course, is that our survivors don't get as big. But we like their temperment, and the quality fleece.

Your larger point about lambs being cheaper to loose than cattle is exactly on. It's a big reason we've chose to focus on raising larger numbers of smaller animals (sheep, goats) for dairy and meat rather than a few really big ones (Holstein or Angus cattle).

Unknown said...

Thank you, TYF, for this post. I was greatly encouraged. We are raising our first batch of broilers (our first batch of anything). We lost 5 in the first 2 weeks and several thereafter. I know that this is not abnormal considering we have 100, but you captured my feelings perfectly: inadequacy. However, God is good and we have persevered and we are going to process this weekend. Thanks for the encouragement!!

Rachel said...

Ah, turkeys...lol. I'm thinking we'll try them again in tractors through the berries this next year. Maybe...

Sorry about the lost lamb. We've been doing this a year, and I'm already getting used to the high cost (literal and figurative) of living 'on the land', so to speak. We've had a sudden problem with coyotes, losing half of our flock of birds in less than a week. Including our one mature rooster.

We're going to have to buy some more chicks the end of this month, and hopefully, will have a sufficient amount of luck with them, so we can keep most of them going to get our flock rejuevenated.

How is the YFBaby coming along? I was offline for a while, so may have missed an update. Hope all is going well!

TYF said...

Rachael - Adoption process is going great, but has been time consuming (and is why posting has been slow of late).

We had big trouble with coyotees at our old place, but they largely disappeared once we got a couple of dogs running the property.

Yeoman said...

For the most part, I think about any farm raised bird suffers from high mortality rates.

Probably all birds do. They're subject to all sort of stuff that kills them.

Yeoman said...

On sheep, I was there when we rounded up the last of the ranch's sheep to go to sale. The last 50 or so of what had been thousands. It was a hot day, and we drove them probably less than 500 yards. None the less, one of them, and old ewe, just stopped after about 75 yards, and died. It was if she had simply decided to do it. "No, I'm staying", and she dropped.