Plaid CJ: Baptism by Fire aka What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger aka Lambing 2012

What a crazy 2 weeks it's been! If I never see a ewe vagina again it'll be too soon! My fingers are still sore and my arms a bit buffer than when I arrived, but I have successfully finished my first round of Lambing! So here's what happened: I thought that the girl who is a 3rd year that I was going to lamb with was going to come with me and stay for halt the first week or so, show me the ropes, and then leave to do her EMS. So imagine my surprise when I arrived only to learn that she was going to be there for 1 day nd the next day I was going to be all by myself! I certainly had to learn fast, and learn fast I did (at least I hope I did!) I was amazed when the farmer trusted me enough (at all) to be alone with his sheep and lambs and keep them alive! I've never worked with sheep, so my initial reaction was TELL ME WHAT TO DO!! To which he responded, its up to you! To which I responded WHAT THE F*@k?! (and a few other choice words, though mainly in my head). It turned out to be a great experience, though most of the time I was in a state of extreme emotional distress ie: at 3am when a lamb refuses to come out and you're pulling until you feel like you're the one who gave birth, and the stupid lamb STILL ISN'T OUT! and you keep pulling and even the ewe (who up until this point has been trying her damndest to escape from you while you're elbow deep into her vag with 1 arm and holding her down with the other) looks back at you with a 'get this thing the hell out of me' look and stands to better assist in the removal of her child. FINALLY the lamb comes out (you, sweaty, tired, glad that there is no cap on the amount of curse words you can use as well as for the fact that theres no one around to hear you scream them into the ewes wool) give the lamb its medicine and twin on another lamb (o did I neglect to mention that while you're exerting yourself holding down the ewe and pulling out her kid there's ALSO a pet lamb thats trying to nurse from your armpit sitting there so you can use the ewes fluids to rub all over the pet lamb so the ewe thinks that she has 2 kids instead of 1 so you can get rid of some pet lambs?) So thats lambing in a nutshell, vast stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror, but all in all it was a great experience. I became a pretty good lamber, hung out with some cool people, played around on a quad bike, released some sheep, lambed inside AND in the field, and even got a rope around a few heads and learned a few tricks of the trade! Also tried my hand at 1 calving, though it needed to crank, so I basically was just shoulder deep in a cow, but good practise for calving in Aug! Though I can say, it was amazing to come home and have a proper shower and to not be covered in placenta and blood. Did I mention that we delivered some dead lambs, one of the legs got ripped off in the process of taking it out, and we decapitated it so that was pretty cool, and one ewe prolapsed her uterus, twice, so we had to sew her up, so that was cool. But good to be home, I was starting to get a little homesick towards the end!