I got my first sheep! I think one ewe is about to lamb!!! help!

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This could indeed explain why everyone's "pet" roos are later attacking them and these folks just don't know why. Very interesting and informative article and should be a sticky note!

I'm wondering if one could get around this by setting up a bottle harness in a pen and just opening the gate and letting the bottle lamb into the feeding pen for feeding times. They would still probably see the human as a food bringer but may not necessarily imprint. One could also rig a heating lamp in the barn so the lamb would not have to live indoors with the humans.

When I had bottle calves I had planned on rigging such a feeder down low so they could nurse like they would on a cow, with their necks bent down and then up to the feeder to simulate their stance if they were nursing from an udder. There is a certain way a young ruminant has to feed that allows the milk to direct to their milk stomach and not their other rumens, thereby increasing their ability to utilize and absorb the milk nutrients effectively without getting that potbellied look that bottle calves seem to develop.

Cattle do not have 'other rumens', they only have one. Their rumen doesn't actually begin to work until they are several weeks old i.e. they do not ruminate fully until around 3 months of age and are monogastrics until that point. The rumen only develops when calves begin consuming forage or grain; if kept solely on milk they would never ruminate. They solely use the abomasum for the first months for digestion, and do not absorb nutrients through any of the chamber walls during this stage. The abomasum works much like the human stomach, and nutrients are absorbed through the small intestine. When nursing or drinking from a bucket a reflex action causes milk to bypass the rumen. This will happen regardless of the height that the calf is fed at. The pot-bellied appearance is not caused by milk being absorbed by the wrong chamber of the stomach, they are not absorbing nutrients through any chamber walls yet. Instead it is the result of poor nutrition.

You are right, it was a misnomer to call all the stomachs rumens. My bad!

Raising a bottle-baby of anykind is very hard work, and I would not recommend it to anyone or do it again myself! I had 3 bottle-babies at the same time last spring, and even though I had experience hand-raising kittens and racoons, this was much harder. Once I got the formula mix right, it was a little cheaper and easier, but I could not wait for them to be weaned------also, they are not weaned as soon as kittens and raccoons! Here are pics of my babaies.......................


























P.S. They are a LOT bigger now!

Looks like you did a good job! So sleek and plump!