Tragedy

On the farm, we sometimes have difficult things happen, and yesterday we had one. In the morning, we looked out the window and saw a sheep laying down when the rest of the herd was walking out into the pasture. That's abnormal behavior so I had to go investigate. Unfortunately, it was a new mother and her baby lamb. It looked like she tried to give birth in the night when we hit nearly 0 for the temperature. After giving birth, when she tried to get up to lick her lamb off and stimulate it, the birth fluid had already frozen and she was frozen to the ground. Because of that, her lamb never was able to get up and ended up freezing to the ground as well. By the time we arrived, the baby was dead and Mama was in bad shape. Fortunately, we were able to get her wool cut off enough to get her on her feet, then held her up and massaged her until her legs started working again and today she is acting normal. I can't help but feel bad for this poor animal who was unable to help her baby because she was frozen to the ground. Sad.