I have put set-ons onto bereaved ewes at up to a week, even 10 days once or twice. Of course you would need to check the milk supply before attempting an adoption, so it would probably be worth milking a bit off her every other day, just to keep her ticking over and to be sure there would be milk there for the foster lamb.
Had you not told us about her "Nanny" behaviour the first year, I might have been questioning you more closely about the calling she is doing. Can she see other sheep nearby, or is she calling to try to make contact with flockmates, ie., just because she is on her own? But that Nanny story screams "good candidate for fostering" to me, so I would definitely be planning to give it a go if it were me.
I agree there is a small risk she may not take the adoptee and if you keep trying for a while before giving up, you would then quite possibly end up with a bottle lamb. But there would be little risk of the birth mother not taking the lamb back if need be, if you do it this way :
i) let the foster lamb have a feed off the birth mother and be licked, so there is a bond and the ewe knows she has 2
ii) wait for it to have a poop, save a bit of the poop
iii) take the lamb away and put the skin on it, pop it in with the bereaved ewe and stay nearby, ready to intervene if she objects to it, but don't interfere unless you have to
iv) assess the situation, and if it is the sort of adoption that is going to need a lot of support and possibly fail, take the lamb away, take the skin off and wipe the lamb down, smear a bit of its saved poop across its anus and under its tail, then rub your fingers across the top of its head, then put it near the birth mother. Its own mother is highly unlikely not to take it back as it won't have been away long and it will smell of its own poop, which will smell of her milk. (You could also save some of the birth fluids and rub some of those over it before returning it to its birth mother.)
However if after a short while the bereaved mother is talking to the lamb (making mummy sheep noises) and not butting it away, you have a very good chance of a successful adoption, even if you have to support the first feed or two.
In all my years lambing hundreds of ewes every year in Northumberland and Cumbria, I must have skinned more than 20 lambs myself and been involved in as many set-ons where someone else skinned the dead lamb, and I can remember only 2 where it didn't work at all, and all but a small handful took the lamb straight away. (These are all ewes left with no lambs, and given a single set-on lamb, just as you are thinking of doing. Figures are very different for trying to twin onto singles.)
Topic: Bad start to lambing (Read 4399 times)
