Island Lambs Have a Spring in Every Step

By C.K. WOLFSON

The snow-covered pasture is a soft, white-on-white expanse curving
under a cold, gray sky. Outside Pam Goff's old Chilmark barn, five
black-faced, wool-plumped ewes mill around on the straw and mud,
bleating in urgent, slow-motion coughs to the skinny-legged lambs
nuzzling against them.

Inside the dark barn, two ewes have been separated with their new
lambs in small makeshift pens referred to as jugs, giving them several
days in which to bond. The ewes - a breed Mrs. Goff calls
"Dukes County Mix" - stand placidly as the wrinkled,
beige and speckled lambs scamper around them. Their bleating teaches the
lambs to recognize their mother's voice, and gentle nudging on
their nose and under their tail encourages nursing. Each jug has a
creep, a small, latched door that allows the lambs access to food
unchallenged by the ewes once they have all been released into the
flock.

Lambing season has begun. It is a Vineyard tradition dating back to
colonial times when the wool trade flourished in the Northeast and sheep
farming was an Island industry second only to fishing. Where once Island
sheep numbered in the thousands, today there are only about a dozen
Island sheep farmers, a close fellowship that includes Allen Whiting,
Clarissa Allen, Frank Fenner, Allen Healy, Pam Goff, Ann Hopkins (Mrs.
Goff's mentor), Glenn Jackson and Flat Point Farm's Arnold
(Arnie) M. Fischer Jr. and his sister, Eleanor Neubert.

As Mrs. Goff checks a ewe in the barn who has not yet lambed,
English sparrows flutter out from under the beams. The flock from the
yard has ambled inside and is pushing against her. She has 10 ewes
including two older ones ("I probably should replace these two old
ladies, if I can harden my heart"), and so far, nine lambs -
fewer than in past years.

In anticipation of the lambing, she sleeps with a window open,
listening for sounds from the barn and checking the ewes every four
hours. And after almost 20 years as a shepherd, she still carries a worn
copy of Ron Parker's The Sheep Book, An Illustrated Guide to
Producing Wool and Meat for Home Use and Profit, into the barn to read
under a flashlight when things seem to be going astray. "Clark
[Mr. Goff] will hold the ewe down, while I try and figure out the
position of the lambs. I look at the book and do a lot of
cursing."

A small wicker basket holds her lambing supplies: a tube of Lamb and
Kid Paste with lactic acid and a syringe applicator; tagging staples,
which she doesn't use; pink, extra thick rubber bands for docking
the tails, borrowed from Clarissa Allen, and plier-shaped stretchers to
apply to them; a jar of iodine to sterilize the umbilical cord;
lubricant; surgical gloves which she seldom uses; feeding nipples, and
Ketostixs to test for pregnancy toxemia. She unzips a little
girl's blue purse and pulls out a scalpel for Caesarian deliveries
or castrations, which so far, she has not performed.

"You can tell if a ewe is struggling, or if she's in a
lot of pain, if you hear them grinding their teeth. If you watch for an
hour or two and nothing's happening, then you know they need help.
Sometimes they'll sit down like a dog, and you know
something's not right. That's the main thing," she
says matter of factly, "you have to pay attention."

Normal birthing is very choreographed. The ewe stands alone, looking
back at herself, pawing the earth as if to make a nest - sniffing,
lying down, getting up and, Mrs. Goff says, "thinking about
what's going on." Serious contractions build after a fluid
is secreted and the ewe instinctively begins licking.

Quoting from Mr. Parker's book - which advises the
shepherd to resist helping whenever possible because too much assistance
keeps the ewe from realizing she has lambed and causes her to reject the
lamb - Mrs. Goff reads, "Needless to say, not all the lambs
have read this book so they naturally don't do everything
I've said."

Birthing can take a few minutes or hours. The lamb receives oxygen
through the umbilical cord and is cushioned by the fluid-filled sack.
Within about an hour after contractions begin, the lamb, possibly still
tangled in its sac, is typically born hoofs first, then the nose, in
what Mrs. Goff describes as a "diving position." After the
umbilical cord breaks, the ewe licks the lamb's nose to encourage
its breathing and under its tail to stimulating its sucking instinct. In
a matter of minutes the lamb stands and within the hour, begins nursing.

In the course of her lambing experiences, Mrs. Goff has delivered
multiple births, fashioned prolapse harnesses and repositioned the lambs
whose shoulders were too wide for their birth canals. More critically,
she has had to completely reverse the birthing position of a lamb whose
head was turned backward. "Pretty traumatic," she recalls.

She seems at the same time compassionately affected by the animals
and realistically practical about nature's laws of survival. Sheep
farming takes a lot of nurturing and accommodating, she says. "As
they get older they get more aggressive, pushing, knocking into you,
becoming a pain in the neck."

"It's all done with economics in mind," Mrs. Goff
says. "But there's no profit in it by the time you end
up." She explains that grain prices, which doubled in the 1970s,
continue to rise; the breeding ram is rented from Flat Point Farm from
early September to October; and in April, the shearer has to be brought
in from off-Island. Pastures have to be divided into corridors so that
the grass has a chance to recover from the grazing sheep.

And when the lambs are between six and eight months old, when their
speckles have faded and their inquisitive little faces have become
darkened like their mothers, they are trucked off-Island for slaughter.
Mrs. Goff sighs, "I hate doing it. I might not even do it another
year."

She walks back into the yard, pausing to let her gaze wander over
the gray and white landscape and the clutter of farm equipment. The
bleating sheep are being accompanied by the thin, whiny song of the
chickens penned in the coop against the weathered fence.

It is a strange sound, her visitor comments.

"I consider it melodic," she says.