Mother's Day During Lambing Season

Some mothers should not be mothers.

Maybe they lack patience.

Or compassion.

Or the instinct to bond.

Or they might sacrifice their offspring instead of protecting them.

At the ranch, we are in the thick of lambing season.

Motherhood skills, along with all of the consequences surrounding those skills, envelop every waking moment for my 13-year-old daughter, Abby, and me.

While most of the ewes have the patience, compassion and bonding instinct to raise their lambs, we spend more time with the ewes that do not.

Our conclusion: Mother’s Day should not be celebrated during lambing season.

Why can’t we toast our mothers in July, right after we honor our mother country? Or August, when we need a holiday anyway?

By then, I would have hauled the unfit mothers to Taco Bell.

I have a couple of ewes practically loaded on the truck already.

One of them, recently named Swimmer, will be the first to be hauled.

Swimmer is 3-years-old, in the prime of her life.

She has been treated just like all of the other ewes since she was born into bright green grass.

She had twin lambs the other day, out in the pasture near another, older ewe with twins. Both ewes had selected a grassy peninsula near the creek, about two miles from the barn, to lamb.

Both ewes dried off their lambs, then nuzzled them to stand.

By the time Abby and I pulled the horse trailer near, with the intention of giving the new families a ride to the barn, the lambs were dry and had full bellies.

But they were still a bit wobbly and uncertain about this life of earth, wind and fire.

Both ewes were understandably nervous, with hormones still raging through their veins after birth, but Abby and I moved slowly with our hands at our sides as we always do.

Swimmer popped her head up and jumped the creek.

One of her twins followed, barely reaching the dry bank on the other side, scrambling to follow her mother up the almost vertical incline.

The other twin stayed with the old ewe and her new family.

This was not a good situation.

I barely cleared the creek and attempted to circle Swimmer and her baby.

Swimmer headed for the barn, ignoring the bleats of both of her lambs.

I circled wide, somehow convincing Swimmer to trot back to her chosen lambing spot.

I needed Swimmer to jump back across the creek, but hoped to catch the newborn before she followed her mother.

My hopes were dashed.

The lamb jumped, went under, flailed in the mud and felt my hand pull her out, dripping wet.

I dried the lamb with my sweatshirt as well as I could.

Swimmer stood at attention about 50 yards away.

I heard her huff at me, like a grizzly sow sounding a warning.

I’d never had a ewe huff at me before.

I looped a piece of twine around the still-soaked lamb’s leg while Abby held her brother. With the twine, we contained the lambs, but offered some distance to comfort Swimmer.

An hour later, Swimmer still wasn’t comfortable.

We needed a new plan.

Abby took the first leg of the race, trotting Swimmer toward the barn, while I followed with the twins and the trailer loaded with the old ewe and her twins.

Then we traded duty.

Abby held Swimmer’s wet twins on her lap and brought the trailer while I took a turn guiding Swimmer toward the barn with threats of violence and opinions about her parentage.

By the time we all made it to the barn, Swimmer meandered into a pen to be reunited with her lambs.

She cooed at her twins, then huffed at me again.

Swimmer doesn’t have much compassion or patience, but she ranks high on the protection scale.

Maybe she is a good mother after all.