We're nearly finished lambing now but about a week ago we had a shearling lambing a 'head only' in the field. We lambed her okay but the crows had been at the lamb's head and pecked away the end of its tongue. (Thank goodness they hadn't taken the eyes.)
Poor little mite was full of vigour but couldn't wrap what was left of his tongue around mum's teat to get milk. Thankfully he could suckle ok from a soft-teat bottle, so we bottle-fed him, leaving him with mum in the shed and hoping the tongue would heal and he'd be able to suckle from her in due course.
After a few days, he was doing fine, but he still couldn't feed off mum, the tongue would bleed each time he was bottle fed and it was clearly beginning to be very painful for him to use the bottle. It was heart-rending to see him try to find a position on the teat which didn't hurt but enabled him to get milk.
Lambing assistant and I decided we couldn't carry on like this, but the little fella has such a will to live we wanted to give him every chance. I didn't think I could bear to tube him 3 times a day for as long as it'll take for his tongue to heal up, so I could only think to try to get him to drink milk from a bowl.
Experienced farmers told me it'd been tried before and you couldn't do it with lambs. Well, I figured we had to try.
Of course he can't lap but ruminents seem to suck water into their mouths so I hoped he'd manage that.
Well, we're now on day 3 of feeding by bowl and he's managing. A lot gets spilled, quite a bit goes up his nose, but he does manage to get his belly full each time we feed him. We leave the bowl full for him to suck at when he wants and give him a fresh bowl, with a supervised feed of warm milk, three times a day. He doesn't now need you to lead his head into the milk by getting him to suck on your finger (though we do have to gently push his head down to the bowl as he is butting at us trying to find a teat) and we are pretty sure he does drink a little from the bowl when we aren't there.
I don't know what his long-term prospects are, whether the tongue will heal and/or regrow, how he'll manage when it's time to come off milk and onto hard feed / forage if his tongue does not regrow.
What I do know is that if it's possible, this wee boy will give it his very best shot.
Topic: The will to live (Read 10903 times)
