The Story of Norma & Hubert

My friend Brooke with Norma the lamb.

 I'd like to introduce you to this year's bottle lamb's: Norma and Hubert.

Norma is an adorable Lincoln/Hampshire ewe lamb whose mother was unfortunately not accepting of her. After several frustrating days of tying her mother up to let Norma nurse, holding the lamb to let the mother sniff her, and doing everything I could think of, her mother would still not accept her as her own. So, little Norma got put in her own tiny pen to be bottle fed. After a couple days, she  developed terrible bloody diarrhea at just a few days old. After consulting with a book called "Lamb Problems: Detecting, Diagnosing, Treating" by Laura Lawson, the best conclusion I could come to was an E. coli infection. I was sure she was going to die in her first week of life, but after diligently treating her with streptomycin, pepto bismol, electrolytes and mixing kefir for probiotics into her milk, she made a miraculous recovery and is still with us today! The way she got her name is a funny story. My friend, Brooke, was over one day helping with chores. She was looking at her ear (which was damaged by her mother) and said "Is this normal?". I heard her ask, "Is this Norma?", and the name just stuck. Norma is small, due to her early setbacks, and sometimes seems a bit confused by flock antics, but she will fit in just fine. 

Little Hubert's mother stopped producing milk when he was about a week old. She is an older ewe, so this sometimes happens. She was still very loving toward him so we decided to keep him with his mother and just supplemented him with milk replacer. He was named by my friend, Kim, who he will be going to live with soon. He is a lovable little ram lamb, though very persistent when it comes to wanting attention. When we separated the ewes from the lambs for weaning this past weekend, his mother went tearing out the door into the pasture by herself (which sheep never do) looking for him. And poor Hubert had a raspy "baa" by the morning. None of the other ewes seemed as bothered as they were. It's amazing to see how bonded they still were, despite the fact she was unable to feed him herself.

I mentioned the book "Lamb Problems: Detecting, Diagnosing, Treating" by Laura Lawson. This book and it's partner book, "Managing Your Ewe and Her Newborn Lambs", have been literal life savers and I highly recommend them to shepherds of any experience level! They have wonderful dichotomous keys to work through the symptoms, descriptions of ailments and treatment suggestions. This book saved Norma's life and has helped in many other situations as well!

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Norma and Hubert, my bottle lambs.

Lastly, the last few years I have had several people ask if I have any "bottle lambs" for sale. While bottle lambs are friendly and cute, I do everything in my power to keep the lambs with their mothers. A true bottle lamb means that their mothers have died or have not accepted them, which is a situation a shepherd never wants! While there are always lambs that need a little bit of supplemented milk, Norma is my first true bottle lamb in a few years. Despite the fact she was ill, she never had to spend time in the house, and was able to be with other lambs and their mothers at less than 2 weeks of age. This is my goal as a shepherd, as sheep are happiest in the barn with their own kind. Any lamb or sheep will become friendly and lovable if you spend time working with it.