Sylvia and Bob had the pleasure of a tour of this amazing production line of pregnant sheep birthing mostly twins, triplets and quads. Below you can see a portion of the facility. The sheep that are due to give birth are let into the main pen area this photo is of only half of the space. When the see a sheep that is about to give birth they place them in one of the pens. There is an extensive colored ribbon system that tells the hands where the sheep are in the process of giving birth, having their newborn cleaned and inoculated and finally released into a holding area.
Here is what a sheep who is pregnant and about to give birth looks like...
You can see the sack of water extending through her birth canal. Moments after this photo was taken she was placed in a pen with a red cross ribbon to indicate that she was in labor.
If there are more lambs than a mother has milk for they are separated. These are two of the dozen or so pens for lambs from mothers that had triplets or quads where one was taken away. With a new birthing that is only a single and the mother is deemed healthy enough to feed two or even three than right at birth time one or two of this flock would be placed wit the mother. To assure the mother did not reject the baby they are totally smeared in the birthing fluids from the mom and only than will the mother accept the baby lambs as her own.
Once the mother has accepted the lambs as her own the bond is for life. So after the lambs have been cleared to leave the birthing pens then they can be moved into the holding barn. You can see here a portion of the flock and even though it looks like a hodge podge of babies each mother can find her lamb immediately and the same is true for the baby lamb.
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