[Vossa]

Hej! 

I'm at a small sheep-farm in Sweden, and we have a curious thing going on with one lamb. She got rejected by her mother the first week - now they have become very close but still the lamb is barely allowed to drink (she can sneak a drink sometimes from behind instead of from the side, and only from one teat), so she is on bottle feed. But she shows very little interest in drinking (from the beginning on, I basically had to force-feed her the first days), she's 2,5 weeks old now and still she drinks max 150ml in one go, usually only 100, and very slowly. So we still have to feed her six times a day. The last days she's become nearly impossible to catch as well. She never came running but before you could just go in and pick her up, but now she runs away as soon as you enter the field, so she's in a box with her mother. The last time we could only catch her when it started raining and she went inside, so we could corner her. We have another lamb that's on support bottle feed and he comes running every time. It's very strange, if we feed her less she gets weak so she does need to be bottle fed. Any ideas about why she's like this, or ways to make it better? We'd rather not have both of them boxed in for another month, but it seems to be the only solution right now.

Thanks!

[bj_cardiff]

Take her away from her mother and keep her indoors until she's totally accepted the bottle. Formula and Ewe milk are very different and given the choice your lamb is opting for the comfort of her mother and whatever she can pinch. She clearly doesn't know what's best for her!

[Vossa]

Yes that's what I thought as well, but the farmer doesn't want to separate them at this point. So I guess we leave them both inside for now. Anyways thanks for the answer!

[SallyintNorth]

As she has now bonded with her mother, and you are resigned to keeping them in anyway, I would make her a pen to the side of the mother, so they can talk and mum can sniff and lick, but the lamb can’t get to the mother’s udder.  Keep them all together overnight for comfort and security, pen the lamb in her own pen first thing.  Offer her her first bottle two to three hours later.  Keep her separate like this during the daytime, put her back with mum after her last feed when you go to bed.  Hopefully she will begin to take better feeds from you during the day, so you can maybe get her to take fewer, larger feeds.  (At 17-18 days old she will be fine with her mum overnight, no need to do a middle of the night feed .).  Once she starts to know she needs the bottle, hopefully she will begin to call for it and run to you, then you can try her loose with the family again and see if she will run to you as your other top up lamb does.

An alternative, if you are sure the mother has sufficient milk, is to support the lamb to feed from the mother. Instead of bringing a bottle 6 times a day, go in four times a day, steady the mum and let the lamb feed at will.  If there’s a sibling who is taking all the milk, keep both lambs in a pen to the side (as above) during the day, bring both in to the mother’s pen to feed four times during the day and leave them all together overnight, as above.  After a week maybe, the mother may let the lamb feed unsupported.