Roxy’s guest of honour

Apr 8 2008 by Liz Shankland, Western Mail

It may be party time at the smallholding for Josh, but the birthday boy gets overshadowed by one of the guests

NO-ONE likes being upstaged, but when it happens at your 18th birthday party, it can be a bit more difficult to accept.

Luckily, my son and heir Josh is a pretty laid-back kind of guy. He didn’t mind too much that Roxy, our foster lamb, was the centre of attention at his birthday bash. After all, she is pretty hard to ignore.

People say sheep are stupid, but I beg to differ. In the two weeks Roxy has been with us, we’ve seen her learn a whole range of things. She recognises the sound of her feeding bottle being washed out, knows which cupboard the milk powder is kept in, and leaps onto the lap of anyone who sits in what has become the “feeding chair”. Friday night and the company it brought couldn’t have been better for her. She’s grown into a really gregarious little thing, craving attention constantly and winning hearts by the second. I could easily have sold her 10 times over.

While deciding what to do with Roxy in a few weeks’ time has been on my mind, making sure she is fit and healthy has been my prime concern. I had never bottle-reared a lamb before, my only experience of being a surrogate mother coming from looking after the pups Stella couldn’t be bothered to feed. It’s been a steep learning curve, but I think – and hope – that I’ve turned the corner now.

Roxy, I’m pleased to say, is doing really well.

When I picked her up on that wintry day in the field, two weeks ago, she was cold and weak and looked like she had little chance of survival. The second twin – and a very small one at that – she was clearly not being accepted by Dotty, her mother, and was being head-butted away every time she ventured forward to feed. We tried what we could to help them bond, but it just wasn’t to be. It’s not really fair to blame Dotty; last year she had a full-term, stillborn lamb, so maybe the thrill of delivering a live one took her attention away from the one that followed.

Still, Dotty’s loss has been our gain; it’s been a really satisfying experience saving a life and seeing a helpless little creature grow in strength – and in personality. Roxy, it seems, thinks she’s a dog; she sees Stella as a mother figure and the other two dogs as fellow puppies. When I go out to feed the livestock, the three dogs always come with me but now, hot on their heels, is a little white fluffy thing, keeping pace and sometimes overtaking them. Last week, a gang of workmen were filling potholes in the lane and I heard one say: “Did you see those dogs in that field? I’m sure there was a lamb running with them.” His workmate’s reply? “Don’t be daft, mun.”

One drawback is that the dogs love water – ponds, streams, rivers – anything as long as it’s wet. Roxy quickly learned that water isn’t necessarily a good thing; Josh – extremely fortunately – found her doing the doggy paddle in the pond and it took two hours to dry her off and stop her shivering. Caring for a lamb is like looking after a toddler all over again, trying to see where the hazards lie and doing your best to find ways to block them out.

Roxy isn’t the only one who needed saving this week. Her brother – despite having the loving attention of his mother – got into a real pickle and, if I hadn’t have got there in time, he would certainly have died. When you keep sheep, you kind of tune in to the sounds they make. The lamb’s cry I heard was too persistent and too alarmist to be merely an offspring-calling-to-mother call. That lamb was in distress. I followed the plaintive cries to the bottom field and found what was wrong: the lamb was caught up in a pile of old electric sheep or poultry netting which we had used to use to protect the young trees from bark-stripping. Somehow the lamb had managed to get the four inch-square netting wrapped tight around his neck, face and legs. There was absolutely no way he could have got free, and his mother was powerless to help. The netting was wound so tight, I thought I would have to cut it to get the lamb out but, with a lot of patient fiddling, I managed to untangle the strands and was able to reunite mother and baby – and put the netting safely out of harm’s way.

There’s never a dull moment with sheep – however many you have – and don’t let anyone tell you any different!

You can write to Liz Shankland c/o Western Mail, Blue Street, Carmarthen SA31 3LQ. Please enclose an SAE for a reply. Or email downtoearthliz@hotmail.co.uk