There are so many joys in the farming year. Right now, here in Southern Appalachian springtime, the fruit trees are in full bloom, there are piglets and lambs cavorting in the backyard, the grass is turning green, and raucous birdsong fills the air. There is hope and anticipation and the pleasure of exhaling after a long inward winter.

But there is also, as always, death. It’s maybe not one of the things you think about when imagining life as a farmer, but it’s always there, and can’t be avoided.

We’re all done with lambing this year. We started with six bred ewes. Two of them were Hallie and Callie, our two oldest ewes, both purebred Cotswolds. They were pretty elderly, and over the last year, Callie had been going downhill. Then sometime last summer she hurt her eye, and that was the beginning of the end; only having vision in one eye meant she was more reluctant to go out to graze, and she lost her status as lead ewe, meaning it was harder for her to hold her own with the others when being fed hay or grain. At some point this winter, she lay down and wouldn’t get up, and although we brought her feed and water, it was only a couple of days before she died.

Meanwhile, her twin sister Hallie was as hale and hardy as ever, demanding to be scratched whenever we were out there. But two weeks after Callie died, Hallie died, too.  While the timing seemed strange, we decided maybe they had just reached their particular genetically determined end of the line.

So now we were down to four ewes due to lamb. One morning at the end of February I went out to do my chores, and heard a lamb bleating, but it clearly wasn’t coming from the pen where the ewes were. I hunted around and found a vigorous black ram lamb down by the root cellar. He had clearly come through the fence and somehow made it down the hill to the house. After examining the ewes, I realized that Woodstock, a Cotswold/Lincoln cross had lambed. I presented her with her lost lamb, but she had no interest—she didn’t actually seem to recognize him as anything at all! And she had no milk—a problem we’ve had with our first time Cotswolds.

So we were faced with a dilemma. We had no source of milk for the little guy (they don’t do well on cow’s milk) and there was no way we could justify the expense of milk replacer. Plus he never got colostrum, and in our experience, bottle lambs have just never had the growth rate or health of their dam-raised siblings. So we found a home for him, with a family who thought it might be fun to raise a bottle lamb. Unfortunately he died not long after.

The next two ewes—Maisie and Hannah—lambed with no problems, each producing a healthy ewe lamb, and they both have had plenty of milk. The only one left was Talia, our purebred Icelandic.

ED found Talia licking off her new ram lamb when she went out to do morning chores. He had obviously nursed and was up and walking around, but ED felt something was a little strange about him, a little off. First, he had mildly deformed front legs, and second, he had a lot of fluid in his lungs—his breathing was very, very rattle-y. He held his own over the next few days, while meanwhile, Talia had retained her afterbirth, a first for us. We did some research, and felt ok just waiting and watching, but it was a nagging concern. We also watched the lamb a lot, and knew that we would need to castrate him, because he shouldn’t be left to breed. Finally, after three days, Talia expelled her afterbirth, and was none the worse for wear (big sigh of relief!), but shortly after that the little ram’s lungs started sounding bad again. A few days later he came down with pneumonia and died very quickly.

So we started with six pregnant ewes, and ended up with two ewe lambs. Very nice, very vigorous and healthy ewe lambs, but still! After much rumination, I’m not sure what I would’ve done differently. My only real regret is that we didn’t have a goat to foster that first ram lamb, if for no other reason than to raise him for meat. We are very reluctant to have goats again, but maybe it would be worth it to have a couple for their fostering abilities.

We used to make more heroic efforts with our animals. What I learned from that is that heroically saved animals are never as healthy as the others. If I have to give an animal a shot of penicillin, then I want to sell that animal as soon as possible, because she will never be as healthy as the others—first to get sick, most likely to struggle with worms, least likely to produce healthy offspring.

Animals that need to be saved shouldn’t be used for breeding. Then you’re breeding for weaker and weaker animals, and you’re going to spend lots of time in heroic and heartbreaking situations. Woodstock will either be sold to somebody who just wants a spinner’s flock, or she’ll be butchered. Talia has never had a problem before, always producing healthy lambs, so I think we were just looking at a fluke this time. She has so much milk that we’re milking her for cheesemaking—a silver lining of sorts.

I used to get lots of phone calls from new goatkeepers asking for advice about saving sickly or deformed kids or goats. My advice is usually to let them die—which isn’t very popular, especially with new farmers. It’s hard to develop that emotional disconnect that allows you to make decisions that are ultimately in the best interest of the herd. I don’t get very many of those calls anymore!

The good news is, our flock is being whittled down to only the strongest and healthiest sheep—the ones who thrived all winter on hay, who produced healthy babies and plenty of milk, who didn’t need worming. Including this year’s lambs we have eight wonderful ewes to breed this fall—here’s hoping next year’s lambing will be a little different!