We try to have a "hands-off" approach with our sheep. They birth in the pasture, and we usually just show up to see them happily nursing away -- born without any trouble. Moms can reject babies. This can happen for a wide number of reasons. Sometimes they know something is wrong with the baby. Sometimes it is due to not having a good mother. Other times it is just a random bit of confusion. Many times you don't know why they made the choice to leave one baby. Sometimes they have multiples and tend to 1 or 2 but leave another.
We really try to not raise bottle babies and not breed bottle-babies in the hopes to prevent future Mamas from not being good mamas and rejecting their young.
We've had very good success during the five years we have raised sheep. We rarely have a Mama reject a baby. Unfortunately, sometimes when farming, you get disheartened. You have a string of bad luck, and you start questioning everything you are doing.
We had a bottle baby born a few days ago that Anni took. And today we had a Mama decided she didn't want to feed her baby. We tried a few things, but just couldn't get her to accept this little guy. So we decided to pull him off the Mama. Anni and I have decided to share the care of both sheep. We will keep them together and probably rotate who they are "living" with.
So .... I'm bottle-feeding our first baby lamb. Here's a video Hannah took of me feeding the lamb:
And here is Sidge playing with little May (the girl lamb.) We've named the boy "Iggy."
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