The last few weeks we have had the wonderful job of bottle feeding a little lamb. It didn’t start out as wonderful as we had a lot of injured sheep due to a dog getting into the meadow. This lamb was born after the mother was injured. The ewe was not able to get up and take care of the lamb so someone had to take care of it.

We have had sheep at least for 10 years and never had to bottle feed one before. Lambs are usually easy to raise as the ewes take good care of them.

The girls always wished they could feed one and have it as a pet. So now they got their chance!

I did not have milk replacer so I looked online to see what milk I could make. This mixture worked real well and I used it for the first week. Mix 3 cups milk with 1 egg and a tablespoon of honey.

We fed it during the night for only the first 2 nights. We gave it 4-6 oz. four times a day for the first three days.

From day 3-7 we gave it 8-10 oz. three times a day. We fed it at 8-9 am, 2-3 pm, and 7-8 pm.

For the first four days we kept it in the house. It loved running around in the kitchen but we soon got tired of cleaning up puddles!

Then it learned how to jump out of its box so mom said that it has to move to the barn. Plus it needed to realize that it was a sheep and not a human!

Just before she was a week old I switched her to raw jersey milk. It was never a problem and she is really growing.

So we have been taking turns going to the barn and feeding the lamb. From 1-2 weeks it was drinking 12-14 oz. three times a day. Now at almost 3 weeks we started feeding it just two times a day and giving it 16 oz at a time. Hopefully it will soon eat some hay.

I tried to milk the mother in hopes that she would soon get up and take the lamb. I soon gave up as I realized that the lamb would never take to the mother as she thinks we are her mom! The ewe is finally getting up herself and walking this week so that was quite exciting after all the doctoring I did.

So if you want to feel popular, you just need to go bottle feed a lamb. When she hears the gate jingle, she comes running out of the barn full speed! If the weather is not nice and you want to go to the barn, then she will buck you the whole way as she can hardly wait. When she is done drinking she will follow you back to the gate and baa when you leave. Then she will turn around and with leaps and bounds she will return to the sheep.

So now don’t you wish you had a lamb called Smudge that you could feed too?!